Credit: John MillerAfter releasing three carefully constructed albums, Bastille is going with a new strategy in 2020.

This week, the “Pompeii” band dropped a new one-off single called “survivin’,” which follows the summer release of the similarly self-contained “WHAT YOU GONNA DO???” featuring Blur‘s Graham Coxon.

As for the reason behind the more single-driven approach, frontman Dan Smith tells ABC Audio that he and his band mates wanted to simply “be a bit freer with it.”

“Having made three albums in the same way, it was important to all of us that we kind of just try new things, f*** around with the process a bit, f*** around with how we release music,” Smith explains.

“The environment in which people release music now is much more fluid and there aren’t really as many rules, and that’s great,” he continues. “I think it’s because of that that we want to be able to just put out a track if we’re excited.”

However, Smith assures that anything Bastille releases comes with the same care the band members put into their often concept-driven albums.

“There will always be a lot of thought in everything we do,” he says. “But it just seemed important and exciting to us to be able to throw something out and let it stand on its own two feet.”

As for what’s next for Bastille following “WHAT YOU GONNA DO???” and “survivin’,” Smith remains cagey, but he is “excited for people to see what you do next.”

“I have no idea what they’ll think,” he admits. “But that’s part of the excitement, isn’t it?”

By Josh Johnson
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