Bastille at the sold out Brighton centre; the penultimate show of their 10-date “From All Sides” tour. Performing songs from the entire 15 years of their career; a celebration of the band’s career-spanning, multi-billion streaming records so far.
The tour, the only opportunity to see the four piece of Dan Smith, Will Farquarson, Chris ‘Woody’ Wood and Kyle Simmons, perform live globally in 2025, kicked off with two sold out nights in Plymouth and will close in London at a sold out 02 Arena tomorrow [18th Nov].
Dan Smith formed the band in 2010 in London from a solo project, joined by Kyle Simmons on piano, keyboards, backing vocals, bass and guitar, Will Farquarson on guitar, bass, backing vocals and piano/ keyboards and Chris “Woody” Wood on drums, percussion and backing vocals.
Factoid: The band’s name comes from the French national holiday Bastille Day, celebrated on 14th July, which is Dan Smith’s birthday.
Tonight two support acts. Starting with an early set from Sofia Camara (23), a Portuguese and Canadian artist whose debut EP, “Was I(t) Worth It?” was released via Universal Music Canada in 2025. Her latest release is October’s “Hard To Love” EP.
Then we had Nadia Sheikh, a British/Spanish artist who is an experienced performer from supporting Stereophonics across 19 arena dates of their European “Kind” tour, warming up the crowd for Texas and PJ Harvey in Madrid, her own sets at festivals such as Glastonbury, Isle Of Wight, Kendal Calling, Y Not, FIB (Benicassim Festival) and performing on Spanish national TV.
Between the two supports, Bastille fans were in for a treat when out of the blue and while the PA played one of their tracks, singer Dan appeared and walked along the pit and then climbed over the barrier and jumped into the crowd.
He then danced and sang, but without a microphone. Hoodie on, hood up and “Wake My Heart” printed on the back in white lettering. The fans lapped it up. Then he disappeared backstage and Nadia the second support came on to do her thing. [I understand this was to film for part of a forthcoming music video.]
The venue is probably the smallest capacity of all the venues on the tour: 5,532. But that then lends itself to a more intimate and “up close and personal” experience for the fans. On this tour, no one can moan about a band not dipping into material from some albums or missing out some of the hits.
A bumper 28 song set and snippets of three more. [Apparently they change the set each night].
The band’s first UK arena shows in more than three years, each show features songs from across Bastille’s entire discography. Fan favourites, deep cuts and some very cool unplugged moments. Also we got rarities from the “Other People’s Heartache” mixtapes, and of course the hits from the band’s four top five albums.
They scored a hat trick of UK chart topping albums, with 2013’s “Bad Blood”, 2016’s “Wild World”, “Give Me The Future” in 2022″. “Doom Days” peaked at # four in 2019 as did Dan’s excellent solo album “&” released in October 2024.
- Bastille show their support for grassroots youth music spaces by donating a percentage of the ticket sales proceeds to Youth Music’s ‘Rescue the Roots’ campaign. Bravo.
BASTILLE SETLIST
Things We Lost in the Fire
Shut Off the Lights
Good Grief
Quarter Past Midnight
Warmth
Flaws
Oblivion (with snippet of ‘Weight Of Living Pt 1′)
Blame
WHAT YOU GONNA DO???
Fake It
Doom Days
Hope For The Future
Adagio for Strings / Bite Down / No Angels / Requiem for Blue Jeans / Don’t Let Go (Love) / bad_news / Weapon / Dreams / What Would You Do?
Of the Night
survivin’
Icarus
Save My Soul
Happier (Marshmello & Bastille song)
ENCORE
Two Evils (shortened)
Glory (with snippets of “Bad Blood” and “The Waves”)
Pompeii
Zero evidence that this Sunday night crowd may have had some late nights and a few scoops across the weekend – I know I did! – as it was more like a Saturday night in atmosphere and energy which the band seemingly fed off. Real give and take.
A real buzz in the air and lots of smiles to say, we missed you, you’ve been away far too long. Loud too; with screams and ensemble singing at the top of the lungs. A few hoarse voices today I bet. Whoops of joy too when some songs were announced or during the first few chords, in recognition of rarely performed stuff.
They opened with “Things We Lost In The Fire”, which was their sixth single and taken from their debut album, “Bad Blood. Then it was “Shut Off The Lights” from their “Give Me The Future” album.
Bastille’s usual four-piece was augmented by a brace of female members: multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist AK Patterson, and percussionist Gabi King. Adding another layer to the performance. The lighting is pretty moody for much of the set, and they use multiple LED screens as the backdrop.
Nice to hear “Warmth”, from their second album “Wild World.” And stuff from third album “Doom Days,” which Dan Smith describes as an “apocalyptic party record”, including the LP’s title track which was accompanied by the song’s lyrics in large capital letters. They added a snippet of “Weight Of Living Pt 1” to the song “Oblivion”.
The band gather around DJ decks to mash together tracks, “Adagio For Strings”, “Bite Down”, “No Angels”, “Requiem For Blue Jeans”, “Don’t Let Go (Love)”, “Bad News”, “Weapon”, “Dreams” and “What Would You Do?”.
Penultimate song of the main set, the unreleased “Save My Soul” is premiered on this tour and goes down well, before the hit they did with Marshmello, “Happier”, which precedes the cracking three-song encore…
A shortened version of “Two Evils”, then “Glory” with snippets of “Bad Blood” and “The Waves”, and to close, the timeless “Pompeii”, the band’s fourth single from their debut album “Bad Blood”, and a track which launched Bastille into the bigtime.
It was a well overdue return to touring and after 15 years they are still very much in fine form and seemingly raring to go for another few years yet.
- The band issued special limited edition tour vinyl which features a handpicked collection of live recordings, alternate takes and rare performances, many of which have never been released or made available on vinyl, including fan-favourite version of “Glory”, live from Capitol Studios in 2016. A hand numbered “tour edition” version pressed specially for this milestone celebration.
Photos: Manja Williams
Words: Emma Ledwell
