Wild World by Bastille

Review written by crimsonhawk666

Bastille’s second studio album Wild World came out on September 9, 2016. Imagine what you were doing back then. Were you worried about the upcoming election, bored at work, making your way through school? Personally, I was in my second year of high school in a pretty small town in northeast Wisconsin. Over the previous summer I had figured out I was transgender, but I hadn’t really told anybody yet. My mental health was slowly tanking due to the anxiety of everything, but one thing that helped was the fact that my favorite band Bastille was coming out with a new album that day. They had been teasing the new album for months, with the singles “Good Grief” and “Fake It” coming out in June and August respectively. All the promotional material for this album were centered around “WWCOMMS”, a fake corrupt company. The members would dress up in these white jumpsuits with the WWCOMMS logo on them and they put together a few pop-up shops where you could pretend like you were walking through the headquarters. Even though I tried my hardest to beg every single family member I could get on the phone to go to one of the pop-ups, I was out of luck.

A few days after the album came out, I was added to a groupchat where we took the WWCOMMS stuff way too seriously. This is also when I picked my new chosen name, the first time I had ever come out to anybody as trans. I came into the groupchat with this new name, and somehow it stuck, and is still my name 8 years later, now legally changed and everything. It feels so strange to think about, if I hadn’t come out at that time to a random group of acquaintances I met through our collective favorite band, how long would it have taken me? I am also still friends with a few members of that groupchat, and have both traveled to the UK and across the US to see them.

Getting into the actual music of the album, listening back to these 19 songs bring back so much nostalgia. I still love all the little clips of words from different media, “Good Grief”, the first track on the album starts out with a clip from the 1985 movie Weird Science, and says “So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?”. Bastille has been putting movie excerpts in their songs since the beginning, which started in their mixtapes called Other People’s Heartache. These clips are in most of the songs off this album, and are a unique little touch I have not found in a lot of other music.

Songs like “The Currents”, “Way Beyond”, and “Warmth”, I realize now I didn’t fully understand them back then. They are both political songs, and of course being a newly-out trans teenager during Trump getting elected for the first time was terrifying, to say the least, but I didn’t understand the full escapism that comes with being an adult on social media these days. “Snakes,” which was one of my favorites then and still is today, talks about this escapism as well. The lines “It’s easier to bury my head in the sand sometimes, and I know, I know I know, it’s not the right way to go, but I pray for the ground to swallow me whole” hit home in this new, scary world that adulthood and the 2024 election have brought. The new wave of anti-transgender talk in politics and the media make it even more terrifying to go online, and at times I wish I could just walk away from it all.

Listening to “Blame” and “Fake It” take me back to seeing Bastille live during the touring cycle for this album. If I am remembering right, I think I went to four shows of theirs during this time, and had the pleasure of meeting all of them in Omaha, Nebraska (yes, I made my dad drive all the way out there from Wisconsin). The pounding guitars of “Blame” were one of my favorite parts about seeing them live, the sound sort of encompasses you fully in that moment. “Blame” as well is a good example of just how many layers of sound Bastille puts into their recorded songs, from the reverbed main vocals, to the layers of backing vocals, drums, guitars, synths, etc. If you listen closely, you can sometimes hear upwards of 10 different layers of different sounds happening. I think this is what makes their music such a good candidate for more orchestral versions of their songs, as they have done in the past.

Both “Glory” and “Winter Of Our Youth” talk about nostalgia and feel very nostalgic while looking back at this time around when the album came out. “Glory” was the fan favorite off of the album, essentially forcing the band to make it a single in 2017. It really deserves all the attention it got, though. The strings in it combined with the bombastic drums and vocals make this song unique, and when it gets quiet and more stripped back, it’s at the most impactful moments. I think that the line, “You make me laugh until I die, can you think of any better way to choke?” is still one of my favorite lines in any one of their songs. “Winter Of Our Youth” more directly conquers the subject of nostalgia, and while it maybe wasn’t one of the fan favorites of the time, it has always been one of mine. The almost wiggly-sounding synths are so strange and pleasing to hear in this one. It seems to be a precursor to some of their later work, as well, that has more gospel choir-type backing vocals.

“Power” and “Shame” both deal with disappointment with finding that people have changed for the worse, or not realizing that they made this change a while ago and seeing it later. “Power” in particular, discusses realizing how much power a person held over you in the past, and taking steps to get away from the relationship. This song is a little bit more aggressive at least lyrics-wise than the rest of Bastille’s music which I think is why it wasn’t as popular when the album first came out, but it has always held a special place in my heart because I have definitely been in the position Dan Smith, the lead singer, is talking about here.

The last track off this record, “The Anchor”, is a heartfelt beacon in this otherwise pretty heavy album. In daunting times like these, it is so important to have something, someone to cling onto and this is why building community in times like this is so important. My community back then looked a lot different than my community does now, and in many ways has improved, and I am eternally grateful for it. I think of my partner especially with this song, how he is my “anchor” now. Since the recent election, I have felt this overwhelming sense of community with both my partner, friends, and other loved ones and has been quite a weird thing to come of it all. I wish I could tell me back in 2016 how both terrifying and wonderful life was going to get.