Bastille at Marquee Theatre
Bastille Worth the Wait
by Miranda Reddy
Hundreds braved the beginning of an Arizona summer to wait for the band ever growing in popularity: Bastille.
The line of anxious concertgoers snaked around the building and down the block outside of the Marquee Theatre in Tempe on Easter Sunday as they awaited the concert by this English rock band.
When doors opened at 6:30 p.m., the small standing-room-only theater filled up quickly. A majority of the crowd seemed to be college-age women, dressed in the latest indie fashion, causing the line for men’s security pat downs to advance much quicker than the women’s.
I had never heard anything by the opening band, To Kill A King, but my apprehension with their first song quickly faded as they developed their sound and showed off some impressive vocals.
The 30-minute “intermission” before Bastille was the cue for some of the ruder and taller concertgoers to shove their way to the front. Concerts are one of the many places where being short has its drawbacks.
However, once the band walked on stage and the deafening screams of the crowd subsided, everything was worth the wait.
Red lights shone out from the smoke-filled stage, highlighting the silhouettes of the band members, and gave the audience a hazy but energetic glow. Bastille opened with their song, “Bad Blood,” and started the crowd bouncing to the beat.
The lead singer, Dan Smith, and the rest of the band members were full of energy the whole night, and the spectacular light show added to the impact the music made.
Purple light filled the theater as the band played my personal favorite, “Laughter Lines.” The otherworldly beginning notes were incredibly powerful in person and filled the theater. The lively audience added their voices to every song performed and danced to the upbeat ones.
When the band played the final notes of “Flaws”and walked off the stage, the crowd refused to stop screaming. Reverberating at such a powerful decibel, I thought that someone’s eardrums might burst. The audience refused to leave as scattered groups chanted, “Encore!”
The encore set began with the slower song, “Daniel In The Den,” probably to calm the overly excited crowd. However, everyone should have guessed that the crowd was not going to let Bastille get away without playing their well-known song, “Pompeii.”Accompanied by hundreds of voices, they closed with this hit, leaving the audience satisfied and thoroughly entertained.
The expectations for Bastille are getting ever higher, but they managed to surpass all calculations and energetically please the crowd.
