Bastille meets an upbeat, intriguing sound with poetic, thought-provoking lyrics. The sound keeps you listening, the lyrics linger in the back of your mind, resonating to be reasoned out later. They are lyrics that articulate the world in stories, people, and concepts. This is true for their first album, “Bad Blood,” and for their most recent album “Wild World,” just released in September.
But “Wild World” doesn’t tell the same story as “Bad Blood,” even if their sound is still captivating and the lyrics ring true. “Wild World” presents a world with problems, like that of “Bad Blood,” but it resonates differently, perhaps in that any sort of solution is undefined. Amidst the variety of subjects, distinct themes emerge which give the album this particular character.
Delusion
The theme of delusion appears in the album in multiple contexts. Smith points to places where things are perceived to be other than they are, knowingly or not.
“Way Beyond” captures the impact of media on our reality:
“When panic rises like the oceans
We just keep on flicking through the stations
’Cause if we don’t post it does it happen?”
The clip later in the song reinforces the confusing sense of reality resulting from the media. “Television viewers have the choice of watching the tragedy play out from the seating and comfort of their living rooms. But victims have to respond to the pressure of the media while still in shock.”
“Two Evils” hints at a different sort of delusion, that of self-perception and relationships. “I’m the lesser of two evils/Or am I, am I tricking myself nice?” How can the lesser evil be good?
Also in the context of relationships is “Fake It,” capturing a relationship which, now changed, cannot be returned to. “We can never go back,” Smith writes, but rather than leave this harsh reality, the lines follow, “Don’t turn over, turn over the page/We should rip it straight out/Then let’s try our very best to fake it.”
Distraction
“Wild World” is heavy with problems without clearly defined solutions. The theme of distraction as a response runs through the album. “Warmth” captures the horror of the news – “Never good just the bad and the ugly” – and the response. “Feeling helpless I look for distraction,” the song continues, and later echoes this in “Tie the blinkers on, hold both hands right over my eyes/Deafen me with music.”
The song “Snakes” further addresses the impulse of distraction from anxieties:
“Yes it’s easier to bury
My head in the sand sometimes
And I know, I know, I know
It’s not the right way to go
But I pray for the ground to swallow me whole.”
Here Smith acknowledges the helplessness of distraction, knowing well it is no solution but longing to distract himself nonetheless.
The impulse in “Lethargy” is also toward distraction. Smith describes the seeming freedom of mentally disengaging: “You checked out years ago/Oh what I’d do not to worry like you.”
These are only two themes among many, and this is only a hint of all there is to unravel in the album. Yet distraction and delusion both tell a story of problems without solutions, of things distorted with no way back again.
The week I listened to this album was a week of particular anxiety. I listened to music constantly, filling the spaces of the day and focusing my thoughts on something, anything besides the things clamoring for my attention. The irony soon dawned on me, as at one point I really listened to the lyrics of "Warmth" and heard Smith plead "deafen me with music." It was my plea too.
The music of "Wild World" invites you to listen, to fill your silences, to block from your mind the thoughts that you do not want to entertain. But I came to realize in my own listening that the lyrics, floating in and out of your consciousness, might reflect your mind right back to you, or at least the very world you might be trying to escape from. They present it startlingly clear, albeit without solution; for that, you may need to look elsewhere.
