Casey: How To Reappear
When Welsh post-hardcore quintet CASEY called it a day in 2018, the overarching feeling was that they weren’t actually finished yet. With two emotionally turbulent albums whose lyrics addressed mental health, love, loss and more, they resonated with many across the world. Thankfully, a few years later the band did in fact reform, and with it gifted the world two singles (Great Grief / Atone) and now their third full-length album, the long-awaited How To Disappear.
With a legacy that’s only grown since they were last with us, and an impact felt on not only their fans but the wider scene through their influence, they couldn’t have timed their return better; so we sat down with guitarist Liam Torrance to talk all things CASEY, their return and How To Disappear. “It was a very rushed decision,” he admits of their split. “It was made purely on a breakdown of communications. We were a lot younger, touring probably too much,” he begins, “what we should’ve done is gone for a beer and had a discussion about what needs to change. But it didn’t go that way, we said, we’re bored of this and want to stop doing it.”
That’s a far cry from where we find them today, and in fact where they found themselves not long after. Once realising it was a rushed decision, and that CASEY’s sudden absence from their lives wasn’t something they’d ever wanted, a return was effectively inevitable, even if they didn’t realise it at first when they started writing music again. “Toby [Evans, guitars] and I were sending each other stuff, and we kind of started CASEY without even talking about it. After a couple of songs, Toby asked me ‘why are we doing this’, and I said, we should send it to the others,” Liam explains.
From that point, they realised “just how much we all missed it,” he grins, and they wrote some of their new songs in part to talk about that experience of returning and missing a huge part of their lives. “When we came back we always knew we wanted to create a bigger body of work,” he muses. “We were always aware we had a loyal fanbase,” he smiles of the warm reception they received when announcing they’d be reforming CASEY. “One of the biggest discussions we had was, do we want to make music, or do we want to be a touring band,” he remembers.
It led into arguably one of the major points – CASEY have always written painfully open lyrics, courtesy of vocalist Tom Weaver, and did he want to reopen those old wounds? “He’s in a much better place mentally, physically – it’s very different to how things were in 2018,” Liam reassures us. “His outlook on it was, I can’t be selfish enough to put my own emotions before this entire crowd that have also used these songs the way I have, like medication in a way. Why should I be the barrier of my own emotions to stop someone feeling better?”
While he admits their first tour back was tough, it did reaffirm that this was their place, onstage together. When it came to writing new music, some of those topics crept into How To Disappear; the album deals, in an overarching way, with themes of absence, love and loss, whether that be the loss of CASEY and its absence from their lives, or the absence of people they cared about from their lives. “There’s a lot of topics around health and love,” Liam explains, “and there probably always will be, but Tom gets to start that chapter again and see what people think of these songs.”
What sprung out of a desire to simply create music without even realising it would become CASEY swiftly ended up turning into not only Great Grief and Atone, but the beginnings of an album that they decided had to continue where they left off. As Liam explains, “we thought let’s go back to 2015 CASEY and why we wanted to start the band. Let’s not go in and make Love Is Not Enough Part 3.” And that’s exactly what they did, drawing on their already firm post rock and shoegaze influences to create something much broader than ever before.
There’s post rock swells such as the closing moments of Space Between or the hazy, shoegazey guitars on Unique Lights that opens the album in a far more brooding place than might be expected. “People expect blistering guitars and drums from the get go, but we like opening the album in this weird kind of building way,” he grins. Citing bands like EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY and THIS WILL DESTROY YOU as influences that they made a more conscious effort to broaden their palette; the end result is the most mature album they’ve made, a mellower affair but one that knows when to cut loose.
With their renewed sense of purpose and camaraderie after time away, there’s a clear sense that CASEY recognise that their breakup was premature, and that they’ve returned with a lot left unsaid. How To Disappear continues not quite where they left off, but very much sounds like a more mature band that are comfortable in themselves. As Liam signs off, he reiterates “we just want to reassure people, we’re in a really good space and really excited for what comes our way. We’re glad to be back.”
How To Disappear is out now via Hassle Records.
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