On Returning: Casey Interviewed

January 12, 2023

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11 min read

When post-hardcore darlings Casey announced their imminent breakup on December 1st 2018, no one expected to hear a peep from them again. In their departing statement, frontman Tom Weaver candidly penned “In the interest of upholding our artistic integrity and safeguarding our mental health, we agreed that the moment we no longer felt creatively or emotionally invested in the art that we were making, we would lay Casey to rest.” Hope for their return faltered as months turned into years, where even the most faithful fans saw the prospect of an indefinite hiatus slowly morph into flat-out cessation. But as hope was running low, Casey were working away in the background. Exactly four years after their departure from the music scene, Weaver shared an idiosyncratically cryptic essay filled with a variety of clues and Easter eggs, teasing a potentially bright future for the South Wales group in the frontman’s typically poetic manner.

After much decoding, fans realised that this was a statement of intent. Casey were back. Returning to form with two exciting singles; ‘Atone’ and ‘Great Grief’, the latter already pushing 260,000 listens on Spotify, it soon became violently clear that Casey were back, and the scars had healed from what drew them apart in 2018. Conflating the single releases with a short UK/EU tour announcement that swiftly sold out and prompted venue upgrades and extra shows galore, it’s the comeback story that bands dream of, but it was now a reality for them.

Clash sat down with Weaver to pick his brains around the decisions that led to their comeback statement after four years of quiet, finding inspiration in contemporaries Silent Planet and Holding Absence and ultimately their next steps as a band navigating the rocky terrain of the 2023 musical landscape.

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For a band that burned so bright in their heyday and disappeared so suddenly, I guess my first question is did you ever think Casey was going to come back?

Yes and no. I suppose when I wrote the closing statement for the band, we wrote that if we ever felt there would be a point in time at which we wanted to make new music and we had a new story to tell, we would come back. We wanted to set appropriate expectations, but at the time we didn’t see ourselves doing anything musical with each other anymore. However, we prefaced that there may come a point in time when that tickles our fancy again, so it’s not completely off the cards.

Did you have any concerns or reservations about making a comeback?

From a personal perspective, when the band came to an end, I definitely needed total disconnect, I definitely needed to completely step away from not just Casey, but music in general. I was just so done with it – so disillusioned. And then as time went on, I suppose it was never burning at the back of my brain. It wasn’t as though the weeks and the months were going by and I was like “oh man, I miss dragging a bass cab up six flights of stairs.” But that disillusionment and disconnect subsided rather than there being a sudden resurgence of feeling towards wanting to do this again. And it wasn’t until Liam (Torrance, guitarist) reached out to me and said, “Hey, me and the guys have been messing around some stuff and we want to know if you would be interested in writing parts to this?” I was like, “actually, you know what, I really do want to do that again.” This might not be a forever thing, but it is definitely a ‘for now’ thing.

Exactly four years after announcing your breakup, you announced your comeback. It was the first of December last year. I know you’re quite a poetic man, was that decision intentionally poetic?

Yeah. So it was actually the first of December 2014 when we announced that Casey was a band. That was the first time we posted on social media about the band but wasn’t the start of the band as an entity, because we had another name prior to that (previously Well Wisher). But it was the first day for Casey as a band. Then came the first of December 2018, when we announced that we’re going to break up. Then the first of December 2022 was when we announced we were coming back. It was more of a happy accident because we started having the conversation about doing things again, sort of late July, or early August, and then it was September when we started writing and recording. So as things were coming together and looking like we were in a position to announce, we had to put a date on like when we were going to commit and we were conscious of that anniversary approaching. We decided to use the first of December as our milestone point, and really make a point of bringing things full circle on that date, so there was definitely a level of intent.

That’s really amazing. So maybe an eagle-eyed fan could have potentially developed a theory as to when you were going to resurface?

True. Ultimately there was a short essay that I wrote that gave away a bunch of hints and clues. And one person did work it out almost immediately, but then they backtracked on the theory and within about five minutes, were like, “oh, actually, I’m not sure.”

Can you share the hints you gave away in the essay?

“For 1285 days” were the first three words. And that is the length of time between the final Chicago show, (which was sometime in May 2019) and the first of December this year, and somebody worked that out almost immediately, it was really bizarre. We also have a private Facebook group for friends of Casey. That was started by a bunch of friends, but me and the other boys have joined it over time. So when I posted it there, I mentioned if anyone can guess the correct number of song references included in this, I will give you a prize. And one person did, but they did it by accident. Because it also contains references on Great Grief and Atone, which obviously weren’t out at the time that it was posted. So there’s no way they could have gotten it correct, but they did. But nobody found one Easter Egg. The middle five paragraphs of it follow the five stages of grief, really leading into Great Grief, which is the first single.

Was there a particular moment where you thought ‘This band is coming back now’?

When Liam reached out to me, asking whether I wanted to do anything again, it was really coincidental timing, because he messaged me, two or three days after I’d broken up with my fiancée. But he didn’t know because I hadn’t told anyone. I’m not a believer in fate, but it felt very apt to the point where I called him out about it. And I said, “there’s absolutely no way that you’ve been able to sense telepathically that I am heartbroken, and you are now asking me to reform the band.”

So the conversation began, and very early on we were conscious of the fact that we have a lot more adult responsibility now than we had when we started the band. So being more self-aware, we knew we were going to have to be very selective about the shows that we play and be very intentional about the performances that we do. But, equally, we said that if we were going to come back, we wanted to come back and it to be a new chapter for the band, not just reliving the nostalgia factor.

So before we really started doing anything, we cleared the air to make sure that we’re all comfortable with each other, and we’re all in a good place emotionally and socially, so that when we do then commit to this time together, we know that nothing’s going to blow up. So those conversations needed to be had. Swiftly following that I got sent a demo – a complete song minus vocals. I was like, “Holy shit, this is a Casey song.”

How did it feel hearing that demo for the first time?

I felt I could see myself doing this again, even though I still harboured a level of anxiety with my writing and I’ve always been somebody to compare myself to my peers a lot. I read Lucas from Holding Absence’s lyrics, and read Garrett from Silent Planet’s lyrics alongside a multitude of others, and wish I had said that. So then coming back to it, I was anxious. When Casey came to a close, I went totally off-grid musically – I didn’t write anything. I didn’t touch anything for almost four years.

Wow, that sounds like a burden. The band must have been jubilant when you liked the song. Do you know if they expected you to be on board with it?

A little yes and a little no, to be honest. When Liam messaged me. he said he hadn’t intentionally been writing music thinking it is going to be new Casey music, but as it’s been written, it feels like Casey music. But in the realm of presenting it as a new chapter for the band. We don’t want to nostalgia beat people and come back and just play fucking ‘Hell’ over and over forever.

As I understand, part of the reason that being on stage was not as appealing to you anymore was that playing live was so emotionally draining, as you were bringing your grief and trauma on stage every night. How have you prepared yourself to sing those songs again on stage?

That exact question came up among us. The band said last time I was really burned out having to dig up these memories every evening and having to perform them to an authentic degree where you might not agree with the sentiment of them anymore. This is largely what ‘Great Grief’ is about in the sense that it covers how my perspective has changed over time and how I was viewing my own trauma at the close of Casey and how I would view it now in hindsight. Now I’ve really got to a place where that doesn’t impact me as emotionally as it has previously. I understand I am volunteering myself into a situation where I know that I’m opening myself up emotionally again to a position of vulnerability. But in exchange for that detriment, I’m receiving a level of personal satisfaction and fulfilment in the luminosity that is returned from these performances.

You shared that the reception to the return of Casey was beyond your wildest expectations. What were your expectations?

I mean, to put it into perspective, we had a backup plan where I was going to fake a hospital admission to cancel the shows if they hadn’t sold. We just had absolutely no read on if people were going to come to shows. When we played the final set of shows, both in Europe and in Chicago, people travelled from all over to come to those shows. They came from Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, and people from all over Europe.

We’ve always been our own biggest critics and were just very conservative in our expectations. We didn’t want to hype ourselves up. Then we put the shows up and Manchester sold out in about 18 minutes. And then London sold out and Bristol sold out within like the day so we were like okay, we can probably be a bit more excited about this and a bit more optimistic about it. But certainly in the lead up to that, we like, there was no expectation, it was very subdued in our camp.

What can we expect from Casey in the near future?

‘Great Grief’ and ‘Atone’ are standalone singles, they are not part of a larger body of work. We are not announcing an album in the immediate future and those are the only two songs that we have recorded at this point. They are not the only two songs we’ve written, but they’re the only song we’ve recorded.

In both singles ‘Atone’ and ‘Great Grief’, I detected a bit more hope in your lyrics. The melancholy and self-reflection are certainly still there, but it feels like this chapter of Casey has the potential to be more hopeful?

I definitely think that there are likely to be some themes explored in new music that I haven’t touched on previously. The tone is separated from our previous work in the sense that it tries to explore more everyday feelings. Like everyday sentiments within a relationship setting or the breakdown of relationships. It doesn’t look to focus on the explosive crescendo towards the end of a relationship, but it’s very much more about the subtlety of a separation. I think there’s room for me to still explore similar themes but look for nuances within them. And then there’s also room to explore different themes entirely.

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