Oh, we’re thrilled…

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Will Adams: I will never forget that moment a few years ago when my mother, attempting to describe to me this one song she enjoyed hearing on the radio, reduced it down to: “that kinda Lion King sounding song, you know, ‘ayy-yo, ayy-yo, ay-ay-yo…’” That song was “Pompeii,” and while it was the perfect summary of Bastille’s penchant of watery breakbeat and vague gospel aspirations, I hadn’t realized how incisive she would be about this band’s whole discography.
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Alfred Soto: Imagine Dragons must be in the studio.
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Katherine St Asaph: Every couple of weeks someone will gripe about “poptimism” (defined not as its actual definitions, but as, like, the ordeal of seeing a viral tweet by a 15-year-old), and it depresses me anew how many people want to go back to the days where people would dismiss you as a vapid bimbo if you shared which songs you loved. Or maybe it just bugs me how the complaint is always directed at young women like Ariana Grande or Billie Eilish, and never at nondescript, nonessential, yet popular stuff like this.
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Ian Mathers: The chorus, especially, could be “adult-oriented” radio cheese from pretty much any time from the ’80s to now, albeit with more modernized beats. The latter feel painfully tacked on here; the whole thing feels like a mishmash, the sort of flailing you do when it’s been six years since your last and only big hit (plus or minus one that was basically a “feat.” credit on someone else’s song) and you can’t figure out how to make a song that compelling again.
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Hannah Jocelyn: If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before? This is just “Good Grief.” Bastille would makes this song identical because “Joy is just good grief” sounds profound, but that doesn’t change how distractingly similar the two choruses are. Up to this point, I’ve defended the band and their co-horts (Dan Smith might call me a “proud Remainer”), but “Joy” is a let down. “Pompeii” has aged weirdly well, spacious enough that it would survive in our current pop climate but thoughtful enough in its construction and lyrics that it would stick out of any curated playlist. But instead of using mass volcanic destruction as a metaphor for creative stasis, we get what amounts to “hey bud, glad you called.” Musically, it’s even an improvement on “Good Grief,” with an actual bassline this time and some cute whirring synths. But the gang vocals that made their hits feel so big sound like they’re from a Pokémon soundtrack, and there’s none of the intensity that could elevate a Naughty Boy guest spot or Craig David collaboration into AMV-worthy melodrama. Disappointing coming from a band that seemed like it had so many more ideas. 
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Scott Mildenhall: Counter to the appalling state-of-things preview of Bastille’s new album given by its title track, this plays on Contemporary Anxieties with an impressively light touch. Dan Smith has gone some way to capturing the bittersweetness of the very things he describes: dependence, and its intermittent fulfilment. Beyond “Joy”‘s surface-level uplift — that of “Good Grief”, that of “Flaws” — it is wise not to cast its net too wide, making this a vignette with pathos.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: “You saved me from my brain” is too on the nose, but I can appreciate the sentiment of this half-downer, half-pick-me-up given the context of “Happier.” Really, it’s those weird pneumatic synth stabs that grant the song a nearly carnivalesque sense of delight — something perhaps needed to help you ease yourself into a sincere enjoyment of life. The chunky Tame Impala-like bassline helps.
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Iris Xie: A bland commercial song that should have been commissioned for the Gay Macy’s Day Parade aka Corporate Pride. It has the same boring “cheerful” quality as the songs for The Sims 4 group dances. Perhaps much more effective for The Handmaid’s Tale Gilead dance team, because talking about joy and working hard to prove that it exists is a seriously dire effort in comparison to making music that actually elicits joy. A song for the end of empire.
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