We chatted with guitarist Liam Torrance and drummer Max Nicolai just days before their album ‘How To Disappear’ launched.
“Musically and thematically it’s still very Casey. There’s still a lot of big, emotional sections in the songs, maybe it’s not quite as aggressive as previous records, a bit more open and big.” Max Nicolai
It’s been a year now since your four-year hiatus, where you launched straight into a sold-out UK run, can you recall how those shows made you feel after being away for so long?
Liam: We were really anxious with those shows, Covid happened and four years had passed, and we were very strong as a group and as people, so there were no worries about how we were going to be with each other because we all missed each other so much. But to not have played music with four other people in that time, it was very daunting to just go back into the same capacity shows that we would have done previously. We didn’t do any small club shows, we just jumped back into it. So we didn’t even know if people were going to care anymore, whether the shows were going to sell well. It was exciting for us, and we dealt with it as well as we could, the shows luckily sold out and the reception was like we never left.
You dove into more live shows last year, playing 2000Trees and Download, and heading back to the US. Did you get the response you expected from coming back?
Liam: For me personally, I think we carried a lot of that January stigma over to those festival shows. I don’t think just playing five shows in January was enough for me to be fully bedded in, it was really stressful because five shows weren’t enough to be really comfortable back at it. But it was the same response at the festivals, I think it’s a bit more scary when you just have to rock up and play stages, you don’t really know about capacity or if people will come and watch, but we played full tents in every festival that we played, and it was overwhelming in the best way to slot back into what we were doing and just have as much fun as we can.
Max: When we played 2000Trees, I think our set there was my favourite set we’ve ever played. The energy in that tent, when we played Bruise, which is one of my favourite songs to play live, it’s a really moody one as well, it started pissing it down just before so people started bunching in. The energy in that tent was so good.
Liam: I remember starting to play that set, Trees especially I think as I had a lot of family and friends there, I just felt overwhelmingly nervous because it’s a festival that’s so close to home for us. We usually play really far away, and just as Max said, as soon as we started playing those more well-known songs, the heavens opened up, it was weirdly Biblical.
Max: It was energy you can’t put your finger on.
Liam: It was really strange, but in the best way. It was a nice way to finish off our festival season.
Let’s talk about new music. You released a few singles throughout last year including Great Grief, Puncture Wounds To Heaven and How To Disappear, the title track of your album which comes out January 12th, does this album feel different to previous releases?
Max: It’s a new era for sure. It sounds a lot different, and definitely a progression from previous work. The music we wrote was very much the music we wanted to write, it just naturally came out of us.
Was the writing process any different this time?
Liam: Yeah, we used to write as a collective in a room, we were quite archaic in that sense, but it always paid off. This is the first time, which I think after a product of Covid where we all just carried on writing music, kind of wrote the album almost separately then built chunks over a Dropbox folder. Max would listen, Adam would listen, Tom would listen, and we chose snippets of what we all really enjoyed, and took that as a collective. Whereas, we would just write everything in a room, there were lots of segments of ideas, there were so many files to choose from we just narrowed down what we liked. Our process would be, me, Max and Toby getting together at Toby’s home studio, and finish it off in his home set-up until we were happy with it. It gave us a really nice foundation that we were able to pre-produce almost an entire album and we’d not done that before. We had the album done and dusted in a pre-production state, which is pretty rare for us I’d say, it was really enjoyable.
Max: With our second record, I think at the time we were maybe unsure of what we wanted to do and go into the studio not really prepared. I think at the time we took the position we were in for granted quite a lot. Whereas, this time we were just so excited people liked the couple of tracks we put out and the reception of us coming back, we all thought we’ve got to make this good and we appreciated our position a bit more, and that led us to be a lot more organised going in to the studio.
Are there any major themes throughout this album?
Max: It’s difficult to say, the theme that runs with Casey is so based in lyrics which are very personal to Tom. On this record, it’s definitely more existential, like the previous records a lot of talk about relationships and love, although he has touched on his personal struggles with health and things like that. Whereas, this one is a bit more existential, a bit more about the bigger things.
Musically and thematically it’s still very Casey. There’s still a lot of big, emotional sections in the songs, maybe it’s not quite as aggressive as previous records, a bit more open and big.
Liam: We went into this album cycle with the idea that no sound is a bad sound. We wanted to shape something new, we didn’t want to write the same album three times. I know that our fan-base kind of want that in a way, but no artist is going to be happy with that result with just churning out the same stuff. We wanted to up the sonical maturity a little bit, and write the record we wanted to write maybe four years ago when we disbanded. I think we’ve definitely done that, and the lyrical themes like Max touched on, I think each song gives its own story and that’s something that Tom has been very fluid with. I think that’s what the average Casey listener is going to enjoy in this, there are those reoccurring themes of love, life after death and what lingers when you’re gone, I think there’s something for everybody. It’s very different, but in the same sense it is still very us, still very Casey. Not too far from what we used to do, but it’s definitely matured, and I think that’s what we were really striving for.
Do each of you have a favourite track on the album?
Liam: For me, Toby plays in a side project, it’s very instrumental post-rock, absolutely beautiful, and he released a track called Unique Lights which is the opening track on this album that he wrote himself as a solo artist. It was one of the first things he sent me during Covid when we split up, I can hear anything that Toby writes and know he’s written it in about three seconds, he’s got a very unique writing style. He pitched this idea, he loved the song so much he wanted to reimagine it for Casey. So we let him run with that, it’s his track and I think it’s beautiful. The vocal work on it and some of the melodies, they stick in your brain, so for me the opening track is my absolute favourite and one I’m excited for people to hear. It’s not one we wanted to release as a single, we wanted to hold that back for the album.
Max: Yeah, just to add to that, when Toby released Unique Lights, it was really stripped back to what it is now. When I first heard that, when we weren’t together and we didn’t have a plan to come back, I remember hearing it and feeling so sad because I thought ‘it was a Casey track, that should be a Casey song’. I remember being at my office job and thinking that was horrible! And now it’s so cool that it’s the first track on this album.
My favourite track, I like a lot of them for different reasons, I’m quite a big fan of Those I Am Survived By, purely because it was really fun to write the drums for it, and I think instrumentally that’s one of my favourites.
You’re back on tour as soon as next week with Holding Absence in the US, Dayseeker in Australia and your headliner in March. Are you excited to play these new songs?
Liam: We toured really heavily when we were a band pre-Covid, and we were lucky enough to be a very active touring band. Even from the first EP we put out, we released three songs and we were on a full UK and EU tour within a few weeks. As good as the old stuff is to play and we love playing it live, for us it’s definitely exciting to switch up that set list and put some new songs in there. On this tour coming up we’ve put a few new songs in there and we can see how they go down, and hopefully, it’s as well recepted as our old stuff, but as musicians it’s refreshing to mix up the set list and do things a little differently. It’ll be the same in March on our headliner which accompanies this album, that will be more so than anything, it’s definitely a nice change for us to not play the same songs. See if there are any new sing-alongs, and enjoy it for the new feeling.
How do you keep yourselves busy on any down time on tour?
Max: A vape! I’m really into Eastern Philosophy, I’ll quite often bring some of my favourite books on that, and meditation. I’ll bring those books thinking I might need them, but I never touch them, I don’t even look at them! I just need them to be there. As long as I’ve got some clothes and my vape, and we’ve got some alcohol, I’m good!
Liam: We kind of bounce off each others’ company. So when you’re in a band with five people, the only thing you can really do is talk and have a laugh. There’s no space to go and do your own thing, so we’ve got to vape, drink and laugh I guess! Maybe a good pair of headphones when it’s quiet, or if we’re moody with each other!
How are you feeling for the future of Casey as you’re back in full swing?
Max: I don’t know about you Liam, but I’m already wanting to just write more music. Once you get to the release stage of an album, the band has already listened to that 1000 times, so I’m already thinking of what I’d like to do for the next songs. I’m definitely buzzing to do this year, already thinking about 2025 and when we’re going to record again and what that’s going to sound like.
Liam: Yeah, I’m the exact same. As soon as we submitted that album, within two or three hours Toby was sending over demos for the next one. I don’t think we’re going to give ourselves any dates, but we’ll keep going as we are and if things keep going well and the new songs are well recepted, then we’re going to into next year with the exact same energy. We want to do as much as we can, and see where it goes!
‘How To Disappear’ is out now.