The post-industrial town of Macclesfield, England, has a rather unfortunate reputation due to its tiny size, perpetually grey skies, limited employment opportunities, and lack of even a single movie theater. At a low point in 2004, the Local Futures Group called it the “least cultured” place in England. When tourists do come, it’s often to visit the grave of Joy Division frontman/Macclesfield native Ian Curtis, who died by suicide in 1980 after creating some of the saddest (albeit staggeringly brilliant) music in rock history.
But a new rock trio, Cassia, have emerged from Macclesfield with a wildly euphoric sound that’s the antithesis of Joy Division’s moroseness in every possible way. Over the past few years, they’ve risen from the pub circuit to large halls and festival stages all across Europe, and racked up tens of millions of Spotify plays for bright, joyful anthems like “Right There” and “Drifting” that turn every show into a celebration of life.
“I suppose you can go one of two ways if you live in Macclesfield,” says Jacob Leff, Cassia’s drummer. “You either embrace the dark thing and write something that’s cold and angry, or you can imagine something that’s more of an escape. And it’s not like we’ve wanted to get away from Mac. It’s more about escaping the dreary weather.”
Cassia lead singer Rob Ellis agrees. “I used to think that where we lived was a limitation,” he says. “I thought we’d have to move somewhere to get this thing going since we didn’t have a manager or any way to promote ourselves. But we wound up grinding it out, and I think it put us at an advantageous position living in Macclesfield because it allowed us to imagine these other spaces, and write this music.”
As a kid growing up in Macclesfield, Ellis loved MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Bombay Bicycle Club, and other indie acts. Leff was more into his parent’s music, including the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Police. When he got a bit older, neo-soul acts like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu broadened his horizons. He also became entranced by Paul Simon’s two world music albums, Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints. “It didn’t feel like a traditional form of songwriting,” he says. “He did such interesting and weird things with the rhythms and the vocals.”
Editor’s picks
(Oddly enough, Leff had a very close encounter with Simon when he was 2 years old. “We were on a holiday somewhere,” he says. “Apparently, I was playing with his kids, and I think I struggled to swim. Paul picked me up and kissed me on the head. I believe I was doweled with music in that moment.”)
Right now, Ellis and Leff are in Glasgow, Scotland, crammed in the back of a tour bus where they’ve lived with seven other people for the past few weeks. But this week, Cassia, along with Merseyside indie-rock group the K’s, will lead the lineup for Rolling Stone’s “Future of Music U.K.” showcase, taking place at the inaugural South by Southwest London festival June 4 and 5 at Hoxton Hall in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London.
“We’re at maximum capacity now and someone is sleeping in a chair,” says Ellis from the bus. “And sleeping is the hardest bit since the roads in England are pretty bumpy.”
It may not be an easy or glamorous way of life, but gigging all across England on a large bus with their own crew was the dream when Ellis and Leff met at a Macclesfield pub back in 2015 when they were teenagers. At the time, Ellis and Cassia bassist Lou Cotterill were creating music as a duo, and having a tough go of it. “Lou was playing a kick drum in addition to the bass,” says Ellis. “He got really sick of trying to cover all the bases. We needed to find a drummer.”
The initial pub meeting is a bit of a blur to Ellis. “I was very drunk,” he says. “And Rob and Lou were absolutely steaming. They could barely put a sentence together. One of them said, ‘You’re a drummer, mate?’ And they sent me some songs the next morning. I was having breakfast and living with my mum. She said, ‘That sounds nice. You should definitely do that.’”
Related Content
The band was informally calling itself Cassia before they even met Ellis, but when he showed up to practice with a rope-tuned African drum called a Djembe, made out of Cassia wood, they felt it was a sign that the name should be permanent. That drum also gave them a distinct sound. “It completely changed the way I play,” says Leff, “because I was using my hands half the time. A lot of the early drum rhythms were based around this weird, forced style of playing.”
Cassia’s progress was extremely slow in the early days. Ellis took a job at his old school as a music technician and found odd construction jobs. Leff taught samba music to students at an elementary school. “My drum teacher would lead everything and I’d just sit there and look cross when the kids pissed around,” he says. “I was absolutely useless.”
They did have plenty of time to focus on the band, which was gravitating toward a unique sound that fused together rock with African and Latin rhythms, borrowing as much from Paul Simon as Fela Kuti and Ebo Taylor. “Our only goal,” says Ellis, “was to make music that sounded different than all the other bands in Manchester.”
“This was the time of the Arctic Monkeys,” adds Leff. “And most of the bands coming up then sounded like the Arctic Monkeys with slightly less charm.”
After picking up a small following around Macclesfield and the surrounding towns, Cassia paid for studio time out of their own pockets, signed with Distiller Records, and traveled to Bath, England, to record their debut LP, Replica, with producer Matt Tait. It wasn’t an easy process. “The producer was super intense with us,” says Leff. “And a lot of the stuff on the album is quite difficult to play. I worried I was going to get kicked out of the band.”
Tabeah Berler*
His worries were misplaced. Replica songs “Loosen Up,” “100 Times Over,” and “Small Spaces” generated over a million Spotify plays each. “It must’ve happened organically because we weren’t going around strategically getting people to listen to it,” says Leff. “But we did do a bit of busking, and played every gig we could.”
Just when they were gaining real momentum, Covid hit and shut down the entire music industry. The band moved to Berlin and poured all their energy into cutting their second album, Why You Lacking Energy. Not wishing to repeat the experience of the first record, the trio produced it themselves. “We were kind of expecting to be in Berlin for a small stint of time and then ended up being there for two years, says Ellis. “You had Brexit, Covid, all our gear there that we couldn’t bring back over.”
They had little to do every day besides write songs, which were as bright and cheery as Berlin was dark and dreary. “They were meant to be an antidote to what was a going on,” says Leff. “We wanted to make people feel better.”
The plan worked. “Right Here” and “Drifting” burst onto Spotify and created new Cassia fans all across the globe. It’s made them grateful to the steaming service even though many of their peers loathe it. “People slight Spotify so much,” says Ellis. “But without it, we wouldn’t be where we are. We just wouldn’t have access to all these areas of the world.”
But with the exception of a brief SXSW showcase performance at a tiny Austin venue in 2019, the group stuck entirely to Europe when touring. That changed earlier this year right around the release of their third record, everyone, outside. They’re really proud of this one (“Nothing about it felt laborious,” says Ellis), and they came to America in late March for a run of shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Brooklyn. “There were so many people at Baby’s All Right [in Brooklyn] and it felt like a hometown kind of vibe to it,” says Ellis. “Everyone was singing along, dancing, and it just felt great.”
Europe remains their primary touring base, but they hope to come back to the States at some point soon for a longer tour that hits more of the interior of the country. “I’d love to be able to play couple of thousand capacity venues everywhere we go,” says Leff. “And it’s not for the money or the ego thing. It’s because those sort of venues allow you to put a show on that we really dream of putting on in terms of production design and visuals.”
Trending Stories
“A couple of years ago,” he adds, “we went to Mexico and played a festival on the same bill as Jungle and Parcels. We were halfway through the new album and we were all like, ‘We really want to write songs that feel at home at 10 p.m. on a main stage in front of 60,000 people.’ And listening back to our new album, I actually do think they’d work on the biggest stages.”
Right now, however, Cassia are a couple of hours from playing the intimate club Òran Mór in Glasgow. As soon as they finish, they’ll start a 300-mile drive to the even tinier Mama Roux’s in Birmingham, England. But even as they dream about bigger venues, they’re happy to settle for the ones they’re in now. “Fans at our shows look so free,” says Ellis. “They just close their eyes and dance. It’s really cool to see people connect to music that way.”