Chase Atlantic want to be better. They’re the kind of band who, while the world has been completing Netflix, baking sourdough bread and exploring every corner of their rooms, have been honing their craft, and it’s all on the quest to be all they can be.
“There was no agenda. We were just like, let’s make some music that we fucking really believe is cool,” vocalist Mitchel Cave eagerly starts. “I can say hands down that this is the first album that we’re all very confident in. I’m not sure if that came from the fact that we didn’t have any distractions in terms of touring, and being on the road.”
The Australian trio – Mitchel, along with Christian and Clinton – have been whetting their musical chops. Not just via the physical act of production – they’re a predominantly self-produced band, after all – their expansion is also woven deep into the honesty that they’ve let bleed throughout their third album, ‘Beauty In Death’.
A collection of tracks that kick the doors wide open on this band of youthful exuberance – while their airy, ethereal, trap-laden beats may all sound familiar, in fact, if you dig beneath the surface, you’ll find a world that towers high, and burrows low.
“I’ve never felt more confident, which is a great feeling because it just doesn’t feel scary, it feels like it’s getting easier and even though the expectations are higher,” Mitchel says. “We keep raising the bar…I’m already thinking about a fourth album!”
It could be argued that a band feeling confident, all the while things seem to be getting easier could represent a plateau. But Mitchel bats this away with an enthusing declaration of: “You can’t take a step backwards. If you feel like you’re taking a step back, you’re not doing the right thing.”
‘Beauty In Death’ is certainly Chase Atlantic pushing themselves forward while literally and logistically stationary – a fact that, if anything, helped elevate them to their desired new level. Philosophising on the striking words that make up the album title, Mitchel says the band “do believe that there is beauty in death.”
“I feel like you can look at that in two ways you can look at it as tragedy – which it is – and you can be very heartbroken, and it can be devastating, but if you can find the beauty in death then that’s kind of the cycle of life and energy.
“You can appreciate if a tree dies in autumn, and then comes back the next season, and the flowers bloom – you find beauty in that.” He continues. “You can also find beauty in death when it comes to family members that have passed away – just from personal experience – it brings families together. Something good always comes out of death, no matter how terrible death is, you can always find the good and the bad.”
Rumination on the lifecycle aside, Chase Atlantic’s confident strides into, and out of, this project all come from fear, or there lack of. “There’s no fear of people not understanding because we’ve written two albums,” Mitchel says. “It sounds narcissistic of me, but… I don’t know, it’s a weird feeling. There was so much hardship last year, and we’re proud to have made the album like we could have given up so easily because of all the things that happened. But the fact that we did it and the fact that the songs are what they are – it’s kind of a self inspiring thing.”
No one is more inspired by Chase Atlantic than Mitchel. His air exudes straight up pride in what he and his brothers have achieved. The dream is certainly being lived, but as with every dream, there always comes that waiting nightmare, which can rear its ugly head in the form of anxiety, addiction or depression. Mitchel acknowledges the past year came with a lot of personal things happening “some good, some bad…nothing too detrimental,” he’s quick to clarify, but the rumination of whatever’s happened can be found dotted throughout ‘Beauty In Death’.
“Yeah, those deeper, darker things are our psyches, and that’s a little scary, but it’s also very liberating,” he smiles. “I feel like this is the most honest album we’ve ever released. [Second album] ‘Phases’ was very emotional; fluid and ambient, and poppy, but this one… I mean, ‘Out The Roof’ was the first single so you wouldn’t expect this album to be that personal.”
Indeed, the bravado of Chase Atlantic is just that, a bravado. Admitting that they’re “very kind of reclusive, shy and quiet people”, you could be forgiven for thinking the opposite given their penners of lines such as “I got fifty rackies on me hangin’ out my pants” and “bitch, I’m bulletproof” (‘Out The Roof’), while alongside the dedicating of a song to MDMA, and the struggles of addiction that come with (‘Molly’) – there’s certainly more than meets the eye when it comes to the trio.
“Every single person has a different story, and that’s that’s the main thing,” Mitchel affirms. “Everyone has their stories, and I’m sure they can find something to relate to within our stories. It’s an honesty thing; it doesn’t feel disingenuous.”
Chase Atlantic are a band whose only choice, without completely subverting themselves, was to dig deeper inward. “We don’t have a lot to say politically, I mean we’re not a political band, we still have our own thoughts and conversations and things but that kind of stays private,” Mitchel admits.
But truthfully, that’s not what people want from them. There are indeed bands who give political action a voice, but there are those that need to give the darker thoughts in their head a voice – all the way down to the sinful actions of a party-hard, roaring-twenties rock band.
Which makes for an important aspect of Chase Atlantic, and one that comes coated in the tripping beats – positivity. 2020, a year to be mused on for a long time yet, played into Chase Atlantic’s plan. After setting up camp in L.A. just before things went wild, there they stayed to bring ‘Beauty In Death’ to life, and it’s there they battened down the hatches and cracked on with taking things to the next level.
“I was happy to be isolated and working on music, and being computer nerds at heart and producers,” Mitchel enthuses. Noting that they’ve been fortunate for finding themselves in the ideal position of being able to indulge their inner gear-geek, the Chase Atlantic sound itself doesn’t entirely break through their barriers as much as it builds deftly into something more cinematic and developed.
“To be honest with you we joke about it a lot. I think we always try and go left-field, and we end up in that nice little sweet spot in the middle,” he says on any intentions to properly shake-up the Chase Atlantic sound that’s become synonymous over the past few years. “We like to talk about going so left-field that it’ll throw everyone off, but we always come back to our roots of sensibility, and what we would want to hear from our favourite artists is what we make.”
“There’s always progress to be to had and as long as we don’t take our eyes off the ball I feel our work can never really be done,” he mentions. “Like it doesn’t ever feel like ‘Wow, the album’s done, finished, feel good – I’m gonna take a vacay’. No. It’s just like, that’s an album done, but we need to work more, and we need to do more things.”
“Truly I don’t feel like there’s an end line, it feels like it’s a marathon, but it’s a good marathon, but I don’t see the end in sight which is a good thing, because I don’t want to see the end.” Mitchel urges. “I don’t want to become lazy, I don’t want to become complacent, and it’s very easy – especially with the last year – to become complacent, and just not want to do any work whatsoever. But the beauty of the music is that it’s not really work, it’s kind of therapy.”
With the therapy session for ‘Beauty In Death’ wrapped up, and everyone ready for it to roll out into the world, even including that fourth album in the near-distant pipeline, Mitchel mentions something that he’s been holding in the back of his mind for a few years now.
“My favourite thing to reference is; I remember we’d just finished making our first album, and then started making our second, and I saw – when I was still using Twitter actively – a tweet from Matt Healy. He wrote this massive thing about how the third album is the hardest in a band’s career because it really is the difference between whether the artist can kind of follow through with what they’ve been doing or they crumble.”
Crumble, Chase Atlantic shall not. They’re a band with faith in themselves and their art, and how far they’ve come – from leaning into their poster boy look, to their step into the alternative world after signing to a major label – with their eyes always set on the horizon, means the future is theirs for the taking.
Taken from the March issue of Upset. Chase Atlantic’s album ‘Beauty In Death’ is out 5th March.
