BΔSTILLE, Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, Illinois

The Aragon Ballroom is a historic venue on the north side of the city, completed in 1926.It was designed in an elaborate Moorish architectural style, with the interior resembling a Spanish village, particularly the balconies. The interior ceiling is even painted to resemble the view of a starry sky from the village courtyard, complete with twinkling lights. The main stage consist of a singular large general admission room with just a few balcony seating areas up top. With a significantly elevated stage, the views from anywhere in the room are quite good. Even though the show was sold out, there was plenty of room. With a capacity of 4,500, it is perhaps the nicest venue of its size I have visited.

Bastille are an English rock band formed in London several years ago and consisting of Dan Smith (lead vocals, keyboards, percussion), Kyle Simmons (keyboards, percussion, bass, backing vocals, synthesizers), Will Farquarson (bass, keyboards, guitar, backing vocals), and Chris Wood (percussion, backing vocals). The band derives its name from Bastille Day – an event celebrated on Smith's birthday, July 14th. So just to be clear – English band, named for a French holiday, playing music in an America venue decorated to look as if it was designed by African conquerors of Spain.

Lead singer Dan Smith did all the speaking for the band but was a bit difficult to understand much of the time. Often, I felt like I was only getting every third word. As they only have one album, Bad Blood (2013), released to date, most if not all the songs were pulled from it. This included bookending the show with two of their biggest hits, “Things We Lose in the Fire” and “Pompeii.” There were a few covers as well, or at least one, “No Angels,” a mixture of the TLC song “No Scrubs” and The xx song, “Angels.” It sounded a bit awkward to me; it just didn’t really work. There were a few other songs that didn’t seem to work so well; these are the difficulties of being a new band playing large venues. People expect a 75 minute show, so you include a few songs that would be cut out if you had more to pull from. The seemingly mostly female crowd was excited but fairly tame. The stage show was well done. It included a large triangle shape on stage with the band. A few fans made corresponding triangle shapes with their fingers. I was a bit confused; I thought that was Alt-J’s signature. I guess Bastille do also use a triangle in their stylized signature.

Setlist:
Things We Lost in the Fire
Weight of Living, Pt. II
Laura Palmer
Laughter Lines
Bad Blood
Blame
Overjoyed
Poet
These Streets
Skulls
The Silence
Oblivion
No Angels
Icarus
The Draw
Flaws
Get Home
Of the Night
Pompeii