Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Jack Steadman battled through a fainting scare to lead his band through their Glastonbury festival set on the Other Stage today, bringing new album ‘A Different Kind Of Fix’ to Worthy Farm.
The singer/guitarist explained to NME after the show that he thought he was going to keel over and faint during the gig – but he managed to stay upright in the end.
“I’ve never felt any of those feelings before in my life – I thought I was going to faint at the end of ‘Cancel On Me’,” he said. “I thought, ‘You’re only going to do this once so you may as well faint and rock out and try as hard as you can.'”
Steadman noted how the fans at the front of the crowd were struggling with the heat too. “I kept seeing people trying to rock out but they couldn’t because they’d keel over and die,” he said. “Considering the heat there was some good energy.”
The songs from ‘A Different Kind Of Fix’, including new single ‘Shuffle’, have seen the band embrace a more groove-led sound than their previous rock and acoustic leanings. Steadman said he thought the record could end up alienating some fans – but he didn’t care.
“Obviously some people are going to hate it, especially the single,” he said. “As soon as we put it out we were reading comments, things like, ‘If I wanted to listen to fat beats I’d go listen to LCD Soundsystem. What the fuck is this shit?’ But I’d rather have a small dedicated fanbase than just some guys checking us out.”
He added: “I’m not really listening to guitar music anymore. Which sounds so cliché. I like listening to hip-hop and dance music. Groove – I hate that word, but it’s the only way I can describe it. We’re not going to do what Bloc Party did [on dance-influenced songs such as their single ‘Flux’]. I think it was an interesting challenge to bring it to our band, and I think it kind of worked.”
Bombay Bicycle Club played:
