Bastille have finally released an official music video for ‘Blame’, a single from their latest album ‘Wild World’, as reported by NME.
‘Wild World’ has sold half a million copies and counting world wide, and has so far produced two singles, ‘Good Grief’ and ‘Blame’, for which we now finally have an official video, despite the fact that the song is well known by fans and has been played live by the band for several years. Fans seem to think the wait was worth it, however, with Bastille living up to their reputation for distinctive, strange and just plain indecipherable music videos. Beginning with a quote from Nietzche (as you do), the video features a number of different timelines, universes and cutaways but centres around a meeting, with chairs arranged in a circle with a bowl of water in the centre. The bowl of water has lips (yes, I did say strange and indecipherable) and yes, members of the circle take turns to kiss the lips in some sort of religious or cult-like ritual, achieving a resultant ecstasy. Check out the madness below before I dive in, with the help of fans, the director and the band themselves, to attempt to make some sense of proceedings.
The comments section for the video on Youtube features almost endless speculation about what the video might mean; speculation which runs the gamut from water crises to the influence of the media on society. For his part, frontman Dan Smith, speaking to NME, had this to say about the release; ‘I can’t wait for people to see it. It’s nuts. It’s nice to mess with people’s expectations of us and use the songs as a springboard to create something else. ‘Blame’’s a really important tune for us but it’s also one of the oldest on the record. It’s been quite fun bringing a whole different side to it. Some of the ideas for the video are things we’d thought about for a while but there’s definitely stuff that’s come out of it that I was not expecting!’ The video was directed by Elliot Sellers who has previously worked with artists including Mike Posner, Ty Dolla Sign, Imagine Dragons and Crystal Fighters. He said of the track, ‘With the rowdy motion of the community, Blame becomes the voice of a community of people. The piece plays out like a vibrant sermon.’
If the very brief cameo appearance the band actually make in the video (in a photograph on a desk) is not enough to satisfy your yearning to see the boys then you’re in luck. Although the band recently finished a Tour which culminated in several sold out gigs at London’s O2, they have already set up a few festival dates for 2017. They will play Reading and Leeds, on the weekend of 26-28th August and also The Isle of White Festival, which will take place between the 8th and 11th June – you can read more about that line-up on mxdwn.co.uk.
