Bastille started writing their fourth album, a concept piece about the technology takeover, just before we really did start staying at home and doing almost everything through screens. There’s nothing in any of these songs about us all getting puppies, but otherwise predicting the near future is bountiful territory. On the title track, frontman Dan Smith seems to be enjoying the metaverse Mark Zuckerberg promised us in that video about the Facebook rebrand: “Why would we leave?/Miles and miles of fake beauty,” he sings over emotional strings.
In some of the videos that have accompanied the singles so far, the darker side of computerised reality comes across more clearly. Semi-conscious characters slump on the floor, a small patch glowing on the side of their heads, and visualise gravity-free cityscapes. But Smith is a self-confessed nerd and film buff (there are namechecks for Back to the Future and Blade Runner here, while the videos sit nicely beside the Matrix reboot) and it’s obvious another side of him thinks it would be pretty cool to have a robot girlfriend. “Now us freaks and geeks can rule the world, have everything/Doesn’t matter if it’s real,” he announces on Stay Awake.
