Bastille

So I do...

And invariably, over the years, whether it's sort of in this more recent chapter with Gang of Youths or Pendulum or previous chapters with Bastille, you're always...

You're always inheriting something where, back to the theme of the artist having goals and ambitions, fairly good chance that those have not been achieved or something underneath is problematic.

And you have to wrap your arms around the situation and try and establish what has led to the artist feeling a bit bent out of shape.

Casual Magic is brought to you by Quiver and my patrons at patreon.com. Today, I am bizarrely very excited to have somebody I didn't even know played Magic before.

who I've listened to literally hundreds of hours of, uh, Kyle Simmons of the band Bastille, who I ran into at, uh, magic on Amsterdam.

And I was just like, like my friend Daniel, uh, was like, Oh yeah, this is Kyle.

He's one of our guys here.

And when he was younger and like, you know, I would play a lot of music for him, especially.

I mean, I still play music, but now he plays music for me, which is cool.

But like when he was a kid, you know, and I'm like trying to calm him down and to them and we'd listen and ended up that the songs that were the most impactful, easy way to get him to chill out was basically playing Bastille's Pompeii and of the night over and over and over again.

And it turns out I love those songs.

I was thinking of

Bastille.

I

was thinking of them,

I like that one he did with

Bastille.

Did you put the audio in last year of the Craig David podcast? Of course we didn't.

I'm putting it in now.

They had one-hit wonder written all over them right away, I feel like.

But w- I had this running joke in the 2010s about the, uh, the fluke indie hit sweepstakes that every band gets, like Future One-Hit Wonders like Bastille or, geez, like, I, I did it so many times I can't even think of...

Fun., Gotye.

Mm-hmm.

... crazy robes and stuff.

[laughs]

Yeah, but like I read that and I was like, well, that's why ca- I can load up Pitchfork, and whenever I try and find out any coverage of the, the latest fluke indie crossover of the day, or, you know, like Bastille or Gotye or whoever, I always find nothing.

Mm.

Louis XVI runs out of money, gets into a mess politically, recalling the Estates General.

Mob storms the Bastille and this disorder escalates into what we would call the French Revolution.

And Marat seizes his chance.

He basically thinks back to John Wilkes in London when he was there all those years ago, 1770s or something.

I mean, women are really a

vital part of this story because they kind of emerge as a huge force on the streets of Paris over the spring of 1793.

But also, Dom, just to say that these are exactly the circumstances that led to the revolution in the first place and the storming of the Bastille.

And I suppose part of what makes the situation so toxic is that People, particularly those who are very poor, those who are on the verge of starvation, are thinking, well, we've had the revolution.

We are going to go on to songs now.

And next songs are going to be A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton and Pompeii by Bastille.

Making my way downtown, walking fast.

Faces pass and I'm homebound.

Mountjoy, too, was among the slain.

After languishing three years in the Bastille, he had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton, and having been converted to Whiggism by wrongs more powerful than all the arguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join William's camp as a volunteer.

Five fine regiments were entirely cut to pieces.

No part of this devoted band would have escaped but for the courage and conduct of Averkirk, who came to the rescue in the moment of extremity with two fresh battalions.

How, it was asked, was it possible, without outraging common sense, to put an innocent meaning on the words which Grandval declared that he had heard from the lips of the banished king of England? And who that knew the court of Versailles would believe that Barbsiu, a youth, a mere novice in politics, and rather a clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had done without taking his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorant persons might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an accessory before the fact, but that he was an accessory after the fact no human being could doubt.

He must have seen the proceedings of the court-martial, the evidence, the confession.

If he really abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbsiu have been driven with ignominy from the royal presence and flung into the Bastille? Yet Barbsiu was still at the war office, and it was not pretended that he had been punished even by a word or a frown.

It was plain, then, that both kings were partakers in the guilt of Grandval.