British indie pop band, Bastille, released their second studio album “Wild World” on September 9.  “Wild World” was co-produced by Dan Smith and Mark Crew, a record producer, songwriter, and mix engineer who produced and mixed Bastille’s 2013 debut album “Bad Blood.” Three years after, lead vocalist Dan Smith, keyboard player Kyle Simmons, bass player Will Farquarson, and drummer Chris Wood formed the band in London, England.

The band has come a long way, and their sophomore album offers engaging stories within each song.

“They’ve definitely intertwined a lot of other styles in with theirs. ‘Wild World’ is less story-based and has more emotion and is more personal,” senior Sloane Sexton said. “‘Icarus’ and ‘Pompeii’ are very plot-driven songs, where, for example, ‘Good Grief’ is more personal. I think [‘Good Grief’] speaks to how we, as a society, are sort of blind to the people around us, but we still feel a connection to them.”

A song from Bastille’s debut album, “Icarus” revolves around a Greek Myth. Icarus, the son of Daedalus, was imprisoned along with his father by the King Minos of Crete. To escape, his father created fake wings which were attached to the body with wax. His father warns Icarus not let himself venture too close to the sun because the wax would melt.  

The lyrics explain how Icarus did not take his father’s advice: “Icarus is flying too close to the sun, and Icarus’s life, it has only just began.”

While “Bad Blood” contains meaning underneath the various plot-driven songs, there seems to be a heavier presence of depth and relation in “Wild World.” “Bad Blood” contains surface-level emotion, while “Wild World” plunges into the deepest pits of our everyday fears and tugs on the strings of our hearts.

For example, “Good Grief” holds an immense amount of emotion behind the lyrics, “What’s gonna be left of the world if you’re not in it?”

There is a lot of emotion behind the words as Smith contemplates what his life means without a certain person in it. He speaks about losing control of all his “senses,” thus showing that he is struggling with coping. This song revolves around losing an important connection with another person, thus leading to the struggle in the song.

This album also provides listeners with pop culture references. For example, “Four Walls (The Ballad of Perry Smith)” references Truman Capote’s 1966 novel “In Cold Blood,” while “Send Them Off” alludes to “The Exorcist” and “Good Grief” touches on “Othello,” according to an NME review.

“Wild World” truly holds a lot of emotion and shows the anxieties that anyone can relate to. Bastille branched out, experimented with a variety of influences, and created a tremendous tracklist in which true feeling is brought to the table. It is evident that Bastille reaches to a much deeper extent, far past surface-level emotions.

Bastille has created a marvelous tracklist with a little bit of everything. From various styles, interesting beats, various pop culture references, and underlying meaning mixed in, it seems that Bastille is just getting started.