Bastille’s Dan Smith announces tour and tells us about his new solo album ‘&’: “I wanted it to feel expansive and inclusive”

nme.com:

Bastille’s Dan Smith has shared two new songs from his upcoming solo album ‘&’ and announced a series of live shows for the project.

Check out the tracks ‘Blue Sky & The Painter’ and ‘Leonard & Marianne’ below, alongside NME’s exclusive chat with Smith.‘&’ finds the musician writing about the stories of real and mythological people throughout history, including Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, Marie Curie, Edvard Munch and Chinese pirate Zheng Yi Sao.“I’ve always written music via other stories and nodded towards history or pop culture and narratives that we know, the lives of my friends, and mixed in things I read in the news,” Smith told NME. “But writing ‘Leonard & Marianne’ and then writing a song called ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ and seeing them written down next to each other and the ampersand in between them made me think it would be a really fun project.”Over the last few years, Smith has been writing songs with that concept in mind, but wasn’t sure what shape the record would take until returning home from tour at the end of last year. “I knew Bastille were going to take a break and once I settled back into normality a bit, I went through the songs and started rewriting them,” he explained.Check out our full interview below, where Smith also spoke to NME about the concept behind ‘&’, the record’s accompanying podcast, MUSES: An Ampersand Podcast, and the responsibilities of writing about other people’s stories.NME: Hello Dan.

What was the idea behind ‘&’?Dan Smith: “Initially, it was well-known romantic pairs of people.