CHARLOTTE: Welcome back. It’s been six years since your last download.
MAX: Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. Yeah. A lot’s happened.
C: You brought the sun with you for sure! The main thing is that you’re back and you’re performing again and releasing music as well. You took a little bit of a break after your first two albums. Can you tell me why you took a break and what inspired you to come back?
M: I mean, it was kind of like a mutual thing. It was weird. I feel like where we were as people and, with the music we were playing, we were just kind of in a weird spot and it, and we kind of sat down for a meeting about our third album and, that meeting ended in us being like, let’s leave it there. And we kind of left it fairly open-ended, we can always maybe come back in future, but yeah, it’s weird cause it was kind of a depressing time for a lot of us and we had a lot going on between us and I think when something like that happens and then you don’t see each other for a while, you sort of politics sort of happen as well and people don’t how they’re feeling about each other. But we all just realized we f**king love doing this. So naturally it just came back and I feel like we learned a lot and looking back now, we were lucky to have the hindsight to see what was maybe causing some problems and the way we’ve approached this now, it’s so much better, so much more wholesome. I was just loving writing music. Yeah, it’s great.
C: Back to enjoying it rather than it being an effort?
M: Absolutely, and I think before, because we never expected it to go anywhere when we started out, so even our first tour we were like, f**king hell, this is crazy. And so a lot of it was about, how far are we gonna go? We’re always thinking about how do we sort of go in the right direction and when we came back to it, we are not thinking about that sh*t now. We’ve got our fan base, we love the music we write and if we can get more people into it, then great. But we’re not as worried about that, we just love writing and just love him being able to do this and we’re more grateful for it, it’s cool.
C: You broke up before lockdown, was it? Do you think Lockdown had an influence on you coming back together?
M: Potentially. Speaking [for] myself, I’ve had two kids in that time, so my life completely changed, and I think lockdown probably had something to do with it. Like me and Liam sort of did a bit of a project for a time. I think that kind of made us realize as well why aren’t we just trying to figure something out and, trying to do this again? So, I think they had an effect. It was good timing wasn’t it? Like we had no idea.
C: You’ve released two singles since you got back together. So talk me through the creative process for that and what they represent to you.
Well, I can’t speak for Tom, so I can’t speak for like the lyrical side cause that’s all him and it wouldn’t be fair for me to do that. But in terms of writing the actual music, I mean Toby, when we stopped the band, he never stopped writing music and those songs were, I think he was working on for quite some time. I think they musically really reflect sort of where we would’ve wanted to go anyway if we didn’t stop. And as well, I think we always used to struggle a bit with like, you know, where we positioned in terms of our peers and what is Casey kind of thing. And then with these songs it was just so organic. It was just kind of like, this is us. Like we’re just writing what we like writing. So yeah.
C: And Atone you released on a seven-inch single and you’ve also done reissues of your first album on vinyl as well? Why is it important for you to release it on this particular format?
M: I think that we’re, we are really connected with like our fan base in the sense that, you know, we know that they’re like if you probably don’t know Casey at all or you’re like really into them and like that’s kind of how it’s been with us. So we know that they want like these sort of beautiful physical things like records and things like that. And we know that’s really important. I know Tom’s into like collecting records and things like that and I think it’s just important for us to actually give things to our fans that mean something like something more substantial, like an actual record. I think that’s important.
C: So you’ll continue to release stuff on vinyl as well.
M: Yeah. I imagine I can’t see us not doing that. Yeah. I think it’s important for us. We’re that kind of band. I think so. Yeah.
C: Like I say we’ve got your two singles out. When can we look forward to either an EP or a new album?
M: We’re definitely not recording an album at the moment. Definitely not. I don’t really know what I can say on that front. We’ve been writing, we’ve been writing a lot of music together and it’s been like, for me personally, it’s been the most fun I’ve had writing music, I dunno what else I can say about that really, but I’m really enjoying writing music. I can say that!
C: Is there a tour? Any big performances coming up?
M: So obviously we’re doing US for the first time properly later this year, which will be really fun. Can’t wait for that, and we’re doing some more festivals. We’ve got some plans for next year as well. We’ve got some plans….
C: It’s more a case of watch this space?
M: Yes!
Interview by Charlotte Hooper at Download Festival 2023
