Bastille’s Dan Smith has shared two new songs from his upcoming solo album ‘&’ and announced a series of live shows for the project. Check out the tracks ‘Blue Sky & The Painter’ and ‘Leonard & Marianne’ below, alongside NME’s exclusive chat with Smith.
‘&’ finds the musician writing about the stories of real and mythological people throughout history, including Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, Marie Curie, Edvard Munch and Chinese pirate Zheng Yi Sao.
“I’ve always written music via other stories and nodded towards history or pop culture and narratives that we know, the lives of my friends, and mixed in things I read in the news,” Smith told NME. “But writing ‘Leonard & Marianne’ and then writing a song called ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ and seeing them written down next to each other and the ampersand in between them made me think it would be a really fun project.”
Over the last few years, Smith has been writing songs with that concept in mind, but wasn’t sure what shape the record would take until returning home from tour at the end of last year. “I knew Bastille were going to take a break and once I settled back into normality a bit, I went through the songs and started rewriting them,” he explained.
Check out our full interview below, where Smith also spoke to NME about the concept behind ‘&’, the record’s accompanying podcast, MUSES: An Ampersand Podcast, and the responsibilities of writing about other people’s stories.
NME: Hello Dan. What was the idea behind ‘&’?
Dan Smith: “Initially, it was well-known romantic pairs of people. I realised quite quickly that I didn’t want that to be the theme of the album and so I wrote a song with my friend Ralph [Pelleymounter, To Kill A King] about Marie Curie – that song being about a person and an idea they created really helped shift things a bit. It was more about pairs of people, pairs of ideas or a creator and the thing they’ve made.
“I got in touch with a really interesting and funny academic and historian called Emma Nagouse and I basically started pestering her for stories of people from history, mythology and culture who maybe I hadn’t heard of or who are less talked about. In having been lucky enough to do this for a long time, I don’t want my brain to rot and there’s a part of me that would love to go back to university and learn other things. Part of the point of doing this album was to use it to learn loads about these incredible, interesting people and humanise them for myself.”
Why didn’t you want the album to be strictly focused on romantic couples?
“I wanted it to feel expansive and inclusive. There’s such a massive, rich history of love songs and the ones that stick out to me always have a unique angle and are saying something really fundamental and deep, but in a different way. What I want to do with music and songwriting is always approach things from a slightly different angle or place.”
You’ve always been inspired by other people’s lives in Bastille’s music. With the whole concept of this record being to intentionally tell those stories, does that bring different responsibilities to the songwriting and doing these people justice?
“Massively, and that’s been a really big challenge. Throughout the process, I’ve repeatedly found myself thinking, ‘Who the fuck am I to write about this person?’ I spoke to Regina Spektor, who is someone who’s done a lot of writing about or humanising biblical and mythological characters. We had a really great conversation where she said, ‘As a writer, as long as you’re writing about it because you care then you should have permission to do that’.
“Whether or not that’s true, it was helpful to hear from someone I admire. A lot of thought went into all of them and, fundamentally, I want to write about things that I think are interesting and that I want to have conversations about.”
You’ve made a podcast, MUSES, with Emma Nagouse to accompany this album. Was that another way of showing more care to these stories through sharing the in-depth, historical facts around them?
“Totally, yeah. The idea was to find a space to talk about these people and give more depth and texture to their lives. Emma is someone who is really compassionate and thoughtful around the lives of other people and also holds people to account for what they say and do.
“So, the podcast felt really natural because she had helped direct me towards a bunch of these people [on the album] – some of these songs wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t pushed me in the direction of certain people. It’s just about humanising these people – some of them are real and some of them are myths, but I’m always interested in the context of their lives and what they were pushing up against.”
One of the songs on the album does have a very personal connection for you. ‘Telegraph Road 1977 & 2024’ started out as a poem your dad wrote and your mum sings backing vocals on it…
“When I was 13 or 14, I was just starting to write songs but was acutely aware I didn’t really have much to say. My parents are from South Africa and, before they moved to the UK, they travelled across the US for a year. My dad had this book of notes and poems from that year and he said, ‘Take a look through this and see if there’s anything that sparks inspiration’.
“I saw this poem called ‘Telegraph Road’, which is essentially about homelessness in San Francisco, and I turned it into a song. I didn’t really know any other musicians so I recorded it on my little recording thing and my mum did the backing vocals, because she paid her way through university in South Africa by playing folk gigs.”
“I always think about that song because I really like it and how thoughtful my dad’s poem was. Coming back to this album, I thought how much I’d love to do a proper version of it. I made some tweaks and then thought it would be interesting to write a new verse at the end of me in 2024 acknowledging my dad’s words and also how fortunate I’ve been to do what I do and that take me through San Francisco, and having seen it through my dad’s eyes and then see it through my own and, unfortunately, how little’s changed when it comes to unhoused people. I asked my mum to do backing vocals again and I love where it ended up.”
Sonically, this record is quite different to a typical Bastille album. What was influencing you musically?
“I grew up listening to Sufjan Stevens, Anohni, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Laura Marling and a lot of slightly warmer, more minimal music than maybe what Bastille put out. We’ve always had those moments threaded through our albums, but it came from wanting to do something outside of that. I set out with the intention of making a really small album but I have very little self control so there are moments of almost opening the door to an orchestra. But also some of these people’s lives are so unbelievably mind-blowing that the only way to represent that [is with something big]. When you’re talking about a ridiculously successful Chinese pirate who ran a piracy empire that rivalled the state, it’s so massive and I felt someone like Zheng Yi Sao deserved a big song.”
You’re doing seven live shows for this record across Europe and the US. How do you see the album translating on stage?
“Everything about this album is trying to do things differently and trying to create experiences for me and everyone involved that feel special and interesting. We’re still working out what the live show is going to be, but we’re not going to do this that much so it’s doing the album with a handful of really great singers in some beautiful spaces.”
The ‘&’ tour will kick off in Paris on November 10 and will consist of seven special one-off shows in seven cities. Tickets will go on sale on September 20, with a special pre-sale opening on September 18. Visit here for tickets and more information.
The ‘&’ live dates are:
November 2024
10 – Paris, La Cigale
11 – Brussels, Cirque Royal
13 – Amsterdam, Royal Theatre Carré
14 – Berlin, Theatre Des Westens
17 – London, Shepherd’s Bush Empire
23 – LA, United Theatre
25 – New York, Town Hall
Bastille Presents – ‘&’ will be released on October 25. The ‘&’ tracklist is:
‘Intros & Narrators’
‘Eve & Paradise Lost’
‘Emily & Her Penthouse in The Sky’
‘Blue Sky & The Painter’
‘Leonard & Marianne’
‘Marie & Polonium’
‘Red Wine & Wilde’
‘Seasons & Narcissus’
‘Drawbridge & The Baroness’
‘The Soprano & Her Midnight Wonderings’
‘Essie & Paul’
‘Mademoiselle & The Nunnery Blaze’
‘Zheng Yi Sao & Questions For Her’
‘Telegraph Road 1977 & 2024’