Album of the Month: “Wild World” by Bastille

Grade: B+

A major deal breaker for me with Bastille has always been the limited range of lead singer Dan Smith and the monotonous sound of their previous albums.

Their freshman album, “Bad Blood”, was by no means awful, but they were always lacking a certain wow factor. It was simply adequate. It was good enough to be played on the radio—which doesn’t take much nowadays—but it definitely did not utilize the band’s full potential. So when I heard of the release of their new album “Wild World”, my expectations were low, at best. Mistakenly so, because “Wild World” absolutely dominates.

There’s one word that truly summarizes this album: real. Bastille is shamelessly emotional. They reference real issues with anxiety that the band has faced while touring. They reference sci-fi films, “The Exorcist” and “Othello” along with Truman Capote and rock band Camel.

The album has a variety of themes, ranging from their disapproval of certain political and government occurrences to the simple issues that most kids will face in their lives, such as the feeling of inferiority at school and the gut-wrenching feeling of having to move on after a heartbreak.

The band attempted to break out of their usually upbeat sound and presented haunting ballads to accompany their more distressed music, but their sound generally remained static. In some cases, this acted as juxtaposition and increased the depth of the song. The biggest example of this is in their song “An Act of Kindness”, which is juxtaposition in itself. The underlying message in this song is that a simple act of kindness in a town of “glass and ice” is powerful and can have a domino effect, encouraging others to spread that same positivity and break away from the darkness of the world. In other cases, the band seemed to have an oddly optimistic sound to rather dark lyrics. But that’s also a part of the beauty of this album.

Sometimes you want to cry and sometimes you just want to dance. To some degree, this is detrimental to the album, presenting a variety of focuses within one album. However, most human beings feel a large scope of emotions all within a day, so why limit their music to only one emotion?

This album epitomizes Bastille. Are they a rock band? Are they a pop band? Maybe neither, maybe both. They are unapologetically diverse and so far, it’s worked to their advantage.

Bastille has only improved upon their freshman album, “Bad Blood”. If they continue at this rate, they could be among the ranks of Oasis and The Goo Goo Dolls within the next five years.