ROB ELLIS ON CASSIA’S NEW ALBUM AND UNIQUE RECORD COLLECTIONS

INTERVIEW | CASSIA – ROB ELLIS by Morgan Hermiston

Ahead of the release of their fourth album, lemon gelato, on 4th September, I sat down with Cassia frontman Rob Ellis. We had an intriguing conversation about the newest record from the indie-pop trio and his favourite moments from it, as well as their upcoming tour, and who he’d love to potentially tour with. Read on to find out about all of these things, and more!

All Things Lemon Gelato

With the album name sharing its name with one of the singles, I asked Rob if this was intentional. “It wasn’t intentional, I don’t think, at first. A lot of the songs came about pretty quick because we came back off tour from the Everyone Outside Tour. He continued, “Sometimes it takes a while to develop and find cool ideas for songs, but this time it was like we got in, and within about two, three weeks we had basically a bulk of the album already, kind of done. We didn’t know it“.

“When it comes down to names and stuff, often enough in the end you’re just like, well, what do we call the album? Lemon gelato seemed to fit the sort of wooziness of the songs. I also feel like it sounds super bright, which I think is cool“, adding, “so it helped us push it in a direction for the artwork and things like that, which has been really fun to make and figure out“.

Making The Record

I was interested to know whether the approach this time around was different to their previous three records, and if so, in what ways. Rob began by saying, “This was the first one where we actually took on every part of the process as well. We did everything from writing through to mixing“.

He added, “At first it felt a little daunting to do that, but as we went along, we suddenly realised it was actually, kind of, weirdly easier because you can go into tracks towards the end. That’s normally when you realise you want to make loads of changes to it“.

“When you use external mix engineers, you don’t really have that. You feel weird about asking for that kind of stuff. It’s quite nice to be able to do that in the end. That was really the only difference, I suppose. I feel like everyone else, I felt it was a really good turning point for us in the way we sound and stuff“. Rob went on to say, “we touched on what is now ‘lemon gelato‘…it, kind of, acted as a little bit of a bridge“.

Overall, he said, “there’s not any complexity involved, apart from please don’t suck. You know, that’s what floats through our heads, I think, a lot of the time“.

Favourite Moments

I asked Rob if there was a particular song or moment from the record that he was excited for everyone else to hear too. He said, “‘say something‘, that’s quite cool…it doesn’t sound different from our other stuff“. Rob also added, “‘same as always‘, I really like that one“.

“I feel like I was making these songs, and when we were all getting them all together, you have an attachment to certain ones. I know Jake [Leff] and Lou [Cotterill] have attachments to different ones that they’ve written. For me, those two, I’m really excited about. There’s actually one more…’seeing things‘ is so cool. That’s one of Jake’s and it sets off the whole album“.

Touring: New Cities and Essentials

We chatted a little about any cities or venues that they’ve never played before, or places that Rob is excited to return to. “This time, we’re going to Zurich…which is pretty cool. Vienna last time was really nice, so I’m really excited to go back to Vienna. Cologne is pretty cool, they’re all great. You know, Bristol in the UK is sick, that’s my favourite. One of my favourite gigs we’ve done was in Bristol. I’m just excited to get back out and get going again, it’s going to be fun!“

Rob and I also spoke about how some acts have pre-show and post-show rituals, or essentials. Rob joked, “I wouldn’t say that we have a pre-show ritual, I don’t think we take it that seriously. At this stage, I just want to have a good time. Even if I sing a few bum notes, I’m not that bothered anymore“. He added, “the way I think about it is, if I’m relaxed, then hopefully everyone else can relax in front of me. I just make sure that I chill out as much as I can, because I have quite nervous tendencies. I get quite nervous tendencies for these things, so I make sure that I’m pretty centred before I go on“.

He did say, “I know the guys have different rituals that they always seem to do. But normally, we have a chat, have a good time, play a bit of music. We always run the first two tracks of the set, that’s the one thing that we always do just before we’re about to go on because it feels good when you play them“.

Nervous Tendencies

We spoke about his mention of nervous tendencies, and how nothing is really that deep. Most people in a crowd remember atmosphere over perfect vocals, and Rob said, “someone once said, no one actually cares about you that much, and that really resonated with me“.

Continuing, he added, “you remember the feeling of the show more than mistakes or perfection or whatever. I think you can get hung up on that. I remember at the start, we were well hung up on that stuff, then you loosen up a little bit. As you play more shows, you get into this as well. I always feel the first show back, we’ve got a show next week at Sziget Festival in Budapest, I am pretty nervous for it.“

“The first one back is always quite scary…but yeah, I’m just excited to go out and play these new tunes“.

Dream Support Slots

I saw Cassia support Circa Waves a couple of years ago now, but I asked Rob who he’d love to share a stage with if the band had the opportunity to do so. “I’d love to play with Ocean Alley in Australia, that would be a bucket list tick, that would be really cool. DOPE LEMON, I think is so cool. So those two straight off the bat would be amazing. Tame Impala, that probably isn’t going to happen, but Jungle would be really cool!“

Unique Record Collections

One of Rob’s grandparents curated a small, yet unique, record collection. I asked Rob about this and how, if at all, it has inspired the music on lemon gelato and previous work. “It’s really weird because, although it’s great to listen to lots of stuff, it can actually start to stunt your own creative growth“. He added, “I feel like, at least when I started this, I didn’t really have a vast dept of music knowledge before writing tunes. It’s just more like you actually want to just do something with your time“.

Continuing on, he said, “they only had a few albums…they used to live in Zambia. So when my dad was growing up, and they had all these old, kind of, circus style tunes and high life tunes, and the guitar work on them was wild, cool. It’s very old Afrobeat stuff and things, you know, it just sounds really cool. I remember thinking, wow, I wanna learn how to play a little bit like that, it felt different to what everyone else was doing. So that inspired me“.

“I really dip in and out of those things,” he said, “I mean, bar like Talking Heads stuff, I listen to a lot of Talking Heads because I think David [Byrne] is really, really, clever and interesting. But I don’t necessarily take too much inspiration from other people’s work, because I feel like it can affect your own. I think you start comparing yours with theirs, and it’s never gonna be theirs. You don’t want to be fixated on that, or at least I don’t“.

Dream Festival Lineup

As we close out the main festival season for this year, I asked Rob who he’d want to see play or headline a festival, if he could create it. “Okay cool, I really like The Cure, been listening to a lot of The Cure lately…that would be cool“.

He added, “Jungle, so maybe The Cure would be a headliner, Jungle would definitely play. I went to see The Streets, and it was so good! I saw them at Castlefield Bowl, so The Streets would play“. I asked if Cassia would have a slot on the lineup and he joked, “I don’t want to be that guy who puts their own band on the festival; that would be a bit weird“. Concluding, Rob said, “then Yard Act, I’ve been listening to a lot of Yard Act lately and I think they’re really cool,” and, “Bombay Bicycle Club, because I love Bombay, and then whatever, someone else will figure it out“.

You can listen to Cassia’s newest studio record lemon gelato, which is out now. Tickets for their upcoming shows are on sale too, and you can find these here.