Review: Bastille at Plymouth Pavilions
I was lucky enough to enjoy a night at the Plymouth Pavilions on Saturday night. I am a huge Bastille fan especially after seeing them live at Radio 1s Big Weekend at Powderham Castle this summer. Their Wild World tour encompasses a gruelling schedule finshing in May 2017 with several dates in the United States.
There were two acts supporting Bastille on Saturday in Plymouth – Childcare and Rationale. We were in the queue when Childcare performed but were really impressed with Rationale.
Rationale (formerly known as Tinashe Fazakerley) was born 1984 in Harare, Zimbabwe in the township of Highfield. At the age of 9, along with his three siblings, he moved to the United Kingdom to the Camberwell district of London, where his single mother was working as a nurse. Later, at the age of 11, he moved to the London borough of Hackney and music began to play a more significant role in his life as he learned to play the guitar. His influences were varying, ranging from Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Pat Metheny, Donnie Hathaway and Al Green, to Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest and the Notorious B.I.G.
In 2010, Fazakerley released the album Saved under the stage name Tinashé, but it had limited success.
In 2015, he relaunched his career as Rationale, releasing songs such as “Fast Lane” and “Something for Nothing”. Rationale has a velvety quality to his voice with smooth tones, great range and can that man move?!
The African influence is obvious in many of the tracks he performed. If you can get to see Rationale perform live but definitely go on to Spotify and check him out – this is definitely a perfomer to watch.
We has fantastic seats on the second row of the balcony in the Pavillions, and I am not ashamed to say that at my age I was glad I was not down in the main crowd as I don’t think my feet would have lasted. We had the perfect view!
The atmosphere built and the sellp-out crowd went wild when Bastille finally appeared on stage. This was one venue that the band and in particular Chris “Woody” Wood were keen to return to. Wood was born in Plymouth and wore his Green Army shirt to the delight of the local fans. Dan Smith is the lead vocalist who also plays drums, keyboards and piano; Kyle Simmons plays bass, piano, keyboards, guitar and performs backing vocals along with Will Farquarson who also plays guitar, bass, piano and keyboards. These boys really are multi-talented musicians.
Bastille burst onto the music scene in 2010 with their first songs Flaws and Icarus and were then signed by Virgin Records and released their first studio album, Bad Blood, in March 2013. They won Best British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards in November 2014 and have now sold over 5 million records in the US and 2.5 million records in the UK. Bad Blood went on to be the biggest-selling digital album of 2013.
The playlist on Saturday night flowed seemlessly from the up-tempo euphoric tracks like Good Grief to the haunting ballads like Four Walls (The Ballad of Perry Smith) and back to the toe-tapping sounds of Of the Night – a mashup of dance classics Rhythm is a Dancer and Rhythm of the Night.
The great thing about the Bastille songs is that almost every one has a belter of a chorus that the audience could sing along to. The standout tracks for me on the Wild World album would have to be The Currents, An Act of Kindness, Warmth and Lethargy.
Bastille also performed, Send Them Off, Laura Palmer, Snakes and their huge track Flaws which saw lead singer Dan walking through the crowd! Other huge songs enjoyed included Oblivion, Things We Lost in the Fire, Bad Blood finishing with the hugely popular Pompeii. Lyrically, the song is about the Roman town of the same name, which met its fate with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. It was nominated for British Single of the Year at the 2014 BRIT Awards.
Dan Smith’s energy on stage is amazing and how anyone can sing so well while bouncing like he does astounds me! If you get the opportunity to go to see Bastille live – do it – and if you haven’t really listened to much of their music before then give it a go.
Find out what's coming up at Plymouth Pavilions at www.plymouthpavilions.com
Review by Lisa Singleton
