Holding Absence: Sustaining The Dream
While Welsh alt-rock band HOLDING ABSENCE are no strangers to playing Download Festival, they’re slowly but surely climbing the line-up, and this year they play their biggest show yet at the festival. Catching up with guitarist Scott Carey, he fills us in on what it’s like to be back, and be on the precipice of breaking through.
“We couldn’t believe it when we saw how high up on the stage we were. It’s everyone’s ambition to get up there, so that’s really special to me.” The band are often described as the ‘nicest guys in alternative music’, and that’s so evident when hearing Scott express his gratitude and excitement for being invited back. Forever humble, the band have often explored feelings of imposter syndrome in their music, and times like this make it impossible to ignore. “It’s almost a good thing, because I never want to get to the position when we’re expecting anything. At the end of the day, we’re just four guys from Wales who are just touring the world together, we’ve been friends for sixteen years now. We just do what we do, and if people wanna watch that’s amazing.”
HOLDING ABSENCE have been on a steady incline for the last five years now, but there’s definitely a sense that now is their time, and having just got off an arena tour with PIERCE THE VEIL, two years of straight touring and more to come this Summer, they’ve barely had a moment to breathe. After announcing a hometown show headlining a castle in Wales, and selling it out in two minutes, the band are beginning to feel like things are happening for them. Scott says, “when we were put forward for it, we were like ‘are you sure?’ It’s a really cool time, so hopefully we’re able to make that jump to the next level.”
While the hard work is undoubtedly now paying off, it can sometimes come at the expense of their mental health, and Scott describes how after their headline tour in the US, they suffered extreme burnout. “It was possibly the lowest point in our band, we were all exhausted. It’s been really nice to live a bit of a normal life for the past few weeks, recharge. I can go for another two years now.” Unlike their singer Lucas Woodland, who Scott jokes is constantly thinking about music, Scott tries really hard to maintain a balance of work and home life, to keep his mental health in check so he can be the best he can in his music. “When you’re away so much and so busy it’s really hard to keep hobbies, so seeing friends and family, playing video games, cooking your own food, you’ve really gotta hold it close.”
HOLDING ABSENCE are still very much riding the high of the release of last year’s album, but their fans can’t help but wonder about new music, and Scott let’s on that the band have started thinking about it too. While he explains that it’s in the very early stages, they have started writing, and it’s clear they are thinking extremely carefully about what they want to do and how they want to do it. He states, “we’re definitely in a position now where we’re very aware of why people like our band and what we should do.”
At this point in their career, and three albums in, anything they do now is crucial, and while they obviously care about their audience, the band are trying to not let them affect things too much. “We’re in an exploratory phase at the moment, we’ve got a lot of branches that we can delve in that could possibly end up being an album. We could do a folk record and disappoint everyone.” Although of course, HOLDING ABSENCE fans would love anything they choose to put out, and at this point, a huge part of the appeal is the raw honesty and poetry of the lyrics in their songs. After everything that’s happened to them in the last year, it seems inevitable that they have a lot more they can, and need to write about.
As they start to catapult into success, HOLDING ABSENCE can’t help but to wonder how far they can push it, but of course, they keep logic at the forefront. “Every band will say ‘we wanna headline arenas one day’, like of course we wanna headline festivals and arenas. For now, going to Japan is number one, it’s one of the only places in the world we haven’t really hit yet, and of course South America, Brazil.” While we talk of short-term goals, Scott expresses his hopes for the future of the band. “It’s not very glamourous, but to be able to do this for a long time isn’t something people really think of. A really big part of this is being able to not decline.” He explains that only recently they have come to terms with the concept of being able to be in a band full-time, and making a career out of it, so sustaining that energy and keeping going for as long as possible is the real dream. “As long as we’re doing it for whoever’s there, it doesn’t matter if it’s five or five thousand people, we really do appreciate anyone who spends their time on us.”
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