Cassia's bright, blissful melodies are total escapism. But behind that breezy exterior, the Macclesfield band turn their fears into fuel. Together Rob Ellis (lead vocals/guitar), Lou Cotterill (bass), and Jake Leff (drums) craft songs that empower them to take full control of their emotions. "We know each other best through writing music together," Lou says. "Because everything's there in the lyrics."
Vivid second album Why You Lacking Energy? digs into this tension: these are songs that feel like living in the moment, but are caught up in thoughts of the past and anxieties for the future. From lush, spacious piano ballads to crisp, synth-driven anthems, the entirely self-produced record captures a moment of realisation for the group. “We’ve stopped worrying about what a Cassia song is supposed to sound like,” Jake explains with a grin. “Now it’s a whole new world.”
From start to finish Cassia made Why You Lacking Energy? without anyone else in the room. Rob puts it simply, “It feels entirely ours, and that’s something we’ve always wanted.” The self-sufficiency suits them: the three have an easy chemistry, an obvious mutual understanding. Lou nods in agreement, “We’re just aligned.”
Cassia have always shared writing duties, taking each other’s demos and working together to pin the song down to how the writer hears it in their imagination. But now they’re pushing each other, gently, to make even more confident choices. Rob laughs, “Sometimes I was like: Can I do this? Really?”, referring to the surprisingly weighty, confrontational track Similar. Jake jumps in to reassure him, “But it’s not about risk! It’s just exciting!”
Shedding the weight of expectations runs throughout Why You Lacking Energy?. Soaring lead single Motions is an energetic answer to that little voice inside your head that tells you time is running out. “I wanted it to feel like sand slipping through your fingers. It’s about that spiralling thought that I have every so often: time is slipping away and I’m not spending it how I should,” says Jake. The lyrics pin those abstract worries into a concrete form – ‘you go so far, but never yet far enough to really get you there’ sings Rob – but the song’s ticking momentum builds into a deeply cathartic release. “Motions is a wave of relief,” Jake continues, “it’s the moment I realised I’m not alone in this pseudo life crisis!”
Second single 16-18 (Why You Lacking Energy?) is bathed in nostalgia, a kind of retrospective coming-of-age tune that’s more concerned with the gloss of memory than actual reality. “I was obsessed with how shiny the past looks,” Rob explains, “and I wished I could just go back. In my head it all seemed easier.” But those teenage daydreams collide with real life as he sings of the ‘fear of losing what I ain’t still, my illusion is the present that came before’.
The track also gives Why You Lacking Energy? its title, as Rob remembers “an argument in the car – it’s what someone was saying to me back then”. But since they wrote the song, the phrase has grown in resonance for the whole band.
It feeds into the album’s trio of music videos, which are set in a strangely familiar parallel universe. Information overload has led to a state of total burnout, and the whole world’s hit peak exhaustion. The story begins with Rob, Lou and Jake face down on a sun-bleached beach, waking up to discover a mysterious energy drink has washed up next to them. At first it seems that this neon-coloured can might hold all the answers, but something’s not quite right…
Dreamy and uneasy, with just a hint of dystopia, this tongue-in-cheek fictional world is a metaphor for the self-inquiry at the heart of the record. “The title asks you a pretty blunt, introspective question,” Rob explains. “It’s basically saying, why do I feel the way that I do?”
And as for that mysteriously tempting drink, they refuse to give too many spoilers: “It’s something that’s supplied but doesn’t end up helping... Like a plaster.”
Cassia’s first album Replica (2019) was inspired by a mutual love of afrobeat and highlife. Rob’s dad grew up in Zambia, and it was by combing through his extensive record collection that the band first found their feet. An ambition to sound "as huge as possible" fed into Cassia’s intricate, uplifting early singles and quickly made the band main-stage festival favourites.
In 2021 they released two EPs, Powerlines and Magnifier, that were written while the band lived together in Berlin – holed up in a home studio session that stretched longer and longer as the pandemic continued. But this accidental, radical shift in perspective led the band to their current conclusion, that Cassia can be whatever they need it to be.
Those EPs fed into Cassia's explosive return to the stage, post-pandemic, and the sheer joy of those gigs is captured in the video for Similar, an early single from Why You Lacking Energy? This summer Cassia will bring their epic live show to a host of festival fields, including Truck, Y Not and Boardmasters, and head out on a full UK & Ireland headline tour in the autumn, finishing at London's KOKO.
Now back at home in the North West of England, where they’re building a new studio, it's clear that Cassia have a new-found confidence. It’s evident in tracks like Boundless, a transcendent ballad made of lush harmonies and the wash of the sea, and in the woozy charm of Not Enough Time to Think, a long-distance love song that’s driven by Lou’s intense, impatient bass line. Dreams of My Past is another stand-out; a sparkling, sleepwalking track haunted by the past (‘You cannot lose what you’ve never had, 2020 don’t seem so sad that way’) that makes a vow to live in the moment. Its expansive synth instrumental makes space for that promise to take hold, before asserting ‘you and I write tomorrow, everything else can wait’.
Why You Lacking Energy? closes with the emotional affirmation of See Myself, a song about the search for self-assurance. Over the track’s ear-worm guitar hook, Rob’s vocals feel like a mantra: ‘I thought if I’m fine in my own skin, I wouldn’t be seen through again.’ Initially written by Jake, the track speaks to a game-changing moment of self-confidence. “I realised I can be a bit of a people pleaser,” he admits. “You know, maybe you don’t stand up for yourself. But then you start to think, I don’t want to live in a way that’s not being true to myself.”
Deeply vulnerable and powerfully uplifting, it’s classic Cassia – a band that’s determined to make you feel less alone.
