Hot Press meets Bastille

London indie quartet Bastille are nicely poised to achieve big things in 2013, with their imminently due major label debut, Bad Blood, surrounded by considerable expectation. As you expect with a young band on their first record, they’re facing a hectic year’s touring and indeed when we catch up with the Bastille’s singer and songwriter, Dan Smith, the group are in the midst of a tour with Irish outfit Two Door Cinema Club.

Has rock ‘n’ roll debauchery been the order of the day?
“Yes, there has been a fair amount of drinking and partying,” nods Smith. “A couple of nights in particular. Targeting the days off and enjoying the nights before those has been a big theme of the tour. It’s been wicked.”
Although Bastille are shortly to undertake their first proper European tour, they’ve already been to some exotic locations, with Hong Kong one of the highlights.
“It was brilliant,” enthuses Smith. “Where we were staying wasn’t on the island. Obviously parts of Hong Kong are very kind of ex-pat-y and western, but the part we were staying in felt quite Chinese and authentic. The festival we played was in an amazing location as well, right on the water opposite the city. It was at night, so the water was reflecting the lit-up high-rise buildings, it was awesome.”
The slick anthemic sounds of Bad Blood would appear to indicate that Bastille have an excellent chance of achieving commercial success, although some idiosyncratic tastes have been on evidence on the band’s mixtapes. Other People’s Heartache parts 1 and 2 have been heavy on cover versions, and aside from reworked takes on songs by Lana Del Rey and Calvin Harris, there has been a noticeable focus on, er, ‘90s euro-disco, with Snap’s ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’ and Haddaway’s admittedly underrated ‘What Is Love?’ among the featured tracks.
“What I took from those songs wasn’t the production, it was the hooks,” explains Dan. “There are massive hooks that are ingrained in my mind from hearing them as a baby in the car. They’re so dated now, but they’re also undeniable those songs, in certain ways. Including them in the mixtapes was sort of nodding to them, and I guess also taking the piss a bit, but also acknowledging that there is greatness in them somewhere. And how contagious a massive song or a hook-y chorus can be.”
Film is also a big influence on Bastille, with the penultimate song on Bad Blood, ‘Laura Palmer’, named in tribute to the tragic prom queen at the centre of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, whilst the album’s cover (Smith caught in a car’s headlights on a nocturnal country road) also has a Lynchian feel.
“I love David Lynch’s work, he’s amazing at creating moods and weird narratives,” says Dan. “‘Laura Palmer’ is a song about escapism and running away from problems, basically filtered through the character of Laura Palmer, who I think is an interesting person in fiction. We never see her alive, and we know everything about her. She constructed this fictional idea of herself that’s unpicked after she dies, as time goes on. It’s interesting the facades people can put up.
“With the album cover, I was going for a Lynchian mood as well. It turns out that it also looks like a Radiohead video as well (laughs). I didn’t realise until after I’d very much gone with that image!”
Hip young bands usually attract considerable celebrity interest, although Dan says Bastille have yet to attract any A-list attention, which he says is “fine by me”. So he’s not hoping for nubile actresses to start appearing at the gigs?
“That would be great,” acknowledges Dan. “That would be absolutely fine by all of us. I guess we’ll see. Here’s hoping that will happen.”

Bad Blood is released on EMI on March 4. Bastille play the Academy, Dublin (April 4); Trinity Ball. Dublin (5) and Mandela Hall, Belfast (6).