Welcome to your new favorite band. They’re called Bastien, they hail from London, and their new single “Green Garden,” hits in multiple blissful waves: First comes the magnetic draw of the indie-pop track’s warm comfort, the type of music made for rainy mornings and early sunsets; then comes the mental exercises of would and wouldn’t-be influences, ranging here from deserving nods to The Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, and ’80s-era R.E.M.; and last comes the overriding sensation that we’re hearing something for the first time that’s likely to stay with us for a long while. Heavy words are so lightly thrown, a faded poet once remarked, but sometimes proper music provides necessary strength.
“The song is a sort of meditation on social anxiety; how you can be excited for something and dread it simultaneously,” says vocalist and guitarist Seb Pettit of “Green Garden,” out today (November 30). “How the best laid plans can ‘oft go awry’ to quote Robert Burns.”
Word on the street is that Bastien formed in the English capital a week prior to lockdown, and engaged their first year together writing remotely, exchanging influence and sharing vision as demos materialized digitally. Once the band supplied flesh to familiar rooms, the chemistry took on a larger appetite and the band knew it hit on something special, stirring a sterling cocktail of new wave, soft rock, psych, and jangle-pop, swimming in a sea of amalgamated melodicism, and unknowingly preparing for an immediate future of hearing god-tier comparisons like the ones we’ve spilled a few graphs up.
“We’re a classic London band in that we found each other in this city, having never met before, and we come from a real mix of musical backgrounds,” Pettit adds. “But I think our songs come first and our style secondary. We like to have thought about the song a bit before jamming it in the room together.”
Bastien spent the past year releasing two singles and livening up the London club circuit, and now appear poised for a louder breakthrough. “Green Garden” represents a new and exciting chapter, and it leads into the spring release of debut EP Stroud Green Stoop. Catch a breath and dive in below.