Gig Review: Bastille at Bridlington Spa

There’s a point in Bastille’s show, celebrating the tenth anniversary of their No1 album Bad Blood, where video footage shows the band trying to change a tyre.

They’d broken down on the M1. It’s one of many random anecdotes captured on film since their massive 2013 breakthrough and used intermittently to help create natural interludes in their electric set.

As flat as that tyre was, there’s certainly nothing flat about this thumping performance at Bridlington Spa.

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Lead singer Dan Smith describes it as “insane” how it’s been ten years since they burst onto the scene with their epic debut. It is. It feels like yesterday.

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Bastille

But what’s even madder - and a first on stage experience, as he admits - is when he later has to surreptitiously change his trousers in between songs because it’s so stiflingly hot in the bouncing venue.

Smith didn’t quite have time to complete the job and explains how that led to him singing with his “fly down” for two songs while still busy tying the laces of his trainers.

It doesn’t detract at all from the performance. Opening with the crowd-pleasing Pompeii and straight into Things We Lost and the titular Bad Blood, the approving crowd is dialled in and straight back to 2013.

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In these days of instant access to music with streaming and shuffling, deleting and forgetting, it’s wonderful to hear an album in its entirety, played how it was originally meant from start to finish.

And it deserves this special treatment; the triple-platinum selling Bad Blood delivered seven singles for Bastille so little wonder it was nominated for a Brit.

Two of those singles - Overjoyed and Oblivion - bookend These Streets, Weight of Living Part 2 and Icarus - before Smith takes off into the crowd for Flaws.

He apologies for his voice being “f*****” but it’s far from it even if he does require some assistance at times. Once Bad Blood is completed, Bastille segway into their Beyond Bad Blood second half of the show and an emphatic reminder they are so much more than that dream debut album.

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Good Grief is immense and brings arguably the biggest reaction of the night while What You Going To Do?, The Draw and Laughter Lines all hit the spot before Smith descends into the joyous crowd once more during the brilliant Happier.

Million Pieces, Bastille’s version of Corona's Rhythm of the Night and Shut off the Lights round off a glorious celebration.

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