Wales’ CASEY have announced that their second album Where I Go When I Am Sleeping will be released via Hassle Records on March 16, 2018. The new record – the follow up to 2016’s debut ‘Love Is Not Enough’ – is a deeply personal journey through vocalist Tom Weaver’s issues with physical and mental afflictions, some of which have dogged him from birth. ‘I was diagnosed with brittle bones when I was born,’ he explains, ‘and when I was 15 I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and at 20 I was diagnosed with manic depression. I’ve also had a heart attack and a stroke and I was in this crazy car accident that crushed half my face. They’re big life events, but a lot of the stuff that’s happened to me medically was stuff that I was just living through at the time. Looking back now, though, I realise I could have died four or five times. I’m lucky to be here.’
The first track to be revealed from the record is the gut-wrenching Fluorescents, a composition about January of this year when Weaver experienced a flare up of the aforementioned colitis. ‘This resulted in me being hospitalised for several weeks and my medications being substantially increased.’ he says. ‘It gave me a lot of time to reflect on the state of my health, and how I’d tried so hard to make sure I was staying healthy, to little or no avail. It left me with a feeling of futility and weakness, the idea that regardless of my intentions I would be impoverished for life.’
Where I Go When I Am Sleeping is a jumble of snapshots and reactions and experiences and feelings that give us a glimpse inside Weaver’s head and his life, but which don’t necessarily tell a linear story. He was careful to make sure the accounts of his experiences, while referencing very specific things, were also relatable from an outside perspective. “What the last record taught me,” he says, ‘and what I really brought over to the new one is that I shouldn’t be dissuaded from talking about personal experiences and relating to individual moments or periods I remember quite vividly. But I was more confident in being able to pick those out and expand on them, whilst also diluting them to the point where I can still recognise what I’m talking about and other people can maybe apply them to their own situation.’
Recorded at rural Wales’ illustrious Monnow Valley Studios and produced by Brad Wood (Placebo, Sunny Day Real Estate, Touché Amoré), the songs that comprise the album are much more expansive, atmospheric and layered than anything Casey have done before. It’s a record that flows from one vividly depicted moment to the next, one memory to another. And while there is still some desperate rage and gutteral screaming in the likes of ‘Wavering’, ‘Phosphenes’ and ‘Flourescents’, much has been replaced by calmer, though no less anxious, soundscapes. It makes for an incredibly cohesive and immersive record.
Casey – live on the Kerrang! Tour 2018
(w/ The Amity Affliction, Boston Manor & Vukovi):
December
5: Birmingham, Institute
6: Leeds, University Stylus
7: Glasgow, ABC
8: Manchester, Ritz
9: Newcastle, University
11: Dublin, Academy
12: Cardiff, University Y Plas
13: London, Kentish Town Forum
Where I Go When I Am Sleeping – March 2018 Release Shows:
16th – Kingston – Banquet Instore (Matinee All Ages) & Fighting Cocks (18+) (in association with Banquet Records)
17th – Cardiff – ***TBC**** (in association with Spillers Records)
18th – Sheffield – Picturehouse (in association with Bears Den Records)