After a week of sweltering hot weather and power outages galore, it sure was nice for mother nature to chill out a bit and give us a more British-like summer evening for London-based indie band Bastille to return to the outdoor stage at KEMBA Live! for a slightly dystopian evening of sights and sounds.
Pulling largely from new album ‘Give Me The Future,’ frontman Dan Smith and company led the crowd through a well choreographed 90-ish minute set of pop-fueled music, backed up by video projections of a science fiction future/present in a performance that felt a little less optimistic compared their pre-pandemic visit to this same stage in 2019.
There was still a place for the hits as a revamped ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’ got the crowd on-board early for the fist-pumping sing-alongs, while the infectious energy of a constantly moving Dan Smith helped keep the KEMBA crowd at a high as the loading screens and “session complete” messages on the video kept the performance moving at a steady pace.
Bastille knows that the world is a weird place. I’m not sure I really want to see this version of the future come to pass. However, they do seem to have power.
Columbus’ throwback, Summertime, radio-friendly rockers, 90’s Kids opened the show.
All photos by Matt Ellis