Inside Chase Atlantic’s UK takeover

Chase Atlantic appear on the cover of Alternative Press’ 2023 spring issue. Grab a copy here and head to the AP Shop for exclusive vinyl.

THE MEN OF CHASE ATLANTIC ARE EN ROUTE from their pop-up shop in South London’s Brixton where they met hundreds of their British fans. When the alternative group approached the blue-and-white storefront, you could hear girls’ screams from the tube station. The general public emerged curiously from grocery stores and chicken shops to see what the noise was about. 

Here, at Hammersmith Apollo on a Friday night in January, await at least 800 more fans, mostly teenage girls in streetwear. It’s just hours before doors open for Chase Atlantic’s third and final sold-out show. Over the past few years, this venue has staged shows from artists as huge as Halsey, Wolf Alice and MARINA, and once upon a time you could have seen the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Marley. In other words, the events of this week are an undeniable achievement for Chase Atlantic, something any artist who knows their legendary British venues would dream of.

Read more: 15 greatest supergroups across rock, punk, and metal

Two girls in cargo pants and sneakers who bought VIP tickets — day one fans, right from the beginning fans who have memorized performance clips from their original iteration on The X Factor Australia and listened when the first EPs came out in 2015 and 2016, around the time they were signed to Joel and Benji Madden’s management company MDDN, fans who have traveled across England to be here — are jumping up and down next to the security guards. “They’re just so relatable, and they’re so sweet, genuinely, just such cute, humble people, even though now they’re massive,” Ellie says, who’s 18 from Manchester. Her friend, 17-year-old Amelia from Derby, agrees: “They write about such touchy subjects — mental health issues, breakups, dark stuff in that sort of theme — but they do it in such a good way that makes people feel like they’re being represented. Over lockdown and last year, songs like ‘Swim,’ ‘Into It’ [and] ‘Friends’ went viral on TikTok, and now so many different types of people listen to them.”

[Photo by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

Given this proven virality, the girls wonder if Chase Atlantic realize how big they are in the U.K. now; how they’ve blown up so far from their home country of Australia and new home of Los Angeles. They say, excitedly, that tonight will be a chance to show up for them, by screaming and being part of the best crowd they’ve ever seen. 

“We definitely feel different, and we’d say there’s some levels in the game we skipped,” Mitchel Cave, lead vocalist of Chase Atlantic, acknowledges inside their dressing room a couple of hours later. He’s sitting on the floor, sunglasses now removed to explain their breakthrough, trademark tiny plaits sticking out from under his hat. “We had absolutely no indication before these moments,” he says of this show. 

Guitarist Christian Anthony, blond ’90s boy band-esque hair framing both sides of his face, agrees with his bandmate from the sofa. “We released our last album during the pandemic, so we haven’t been able to see its real-world success. The last shows we played here in the U.K. were 10% of the size now — and the same in Australia.” When those shows went on sale, it was a monumental moment that forced them to realize how well the most recent album had done, how far it had reached.

[Alternative Press spring 2023 issue with cover stars Chase Atlantic, shot by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

For the most part, touring drummer Jesse Boyle (along with touring bandmate Patrick Wilde) has been leaning against the wall in the corner of the room listening to Mitchel and Anthony, who seem most comfortable taking the lead in conversation. Multi-instrumentalist and core member Clinton Cave isn’t feeling well and drifts in and out of the room, hoping to recover before getting onstage soon. “We saw numbers go up during COVID, but when you see numbers on a phone or reports come in that say you’re getting bigger, everything’s going up, you’re just like, ‘That’s cool.’ But it does not make sense until you see it for real,” Boyle says, chewing over his observation. “It’s the difference between getting 20,000 likes on a photo and seeing 5,000 people standing in front of you — it hits different. Numbers are just numbers. People are people.”

Their careers might look different, now three years deep into their move to Los Angeles to focus on work, but, as fans say, they feel and seem no different. “I don’t think there’s been a huge, drastic change in our life,” Anthony smiles. “And we have five of us to keep us a little grounded if someone’s floating away a little bit…”

[Photo by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

REWIND TO 2018. A HOT, STICKY SUMMER across North America. Chase Atlantic were the unlikely breakout band on Warped Tour that year, on a full lineup that included Waterparks, the Maine and Crown The Empire. Watch videos of their high-energy, low-production (as is the Warped Tour way) sets from that year and hear crowds already singing back their lyrics. That experience was a stepping stone that took them a long way; a key turning point in their story that brought them to this room. 

“Warped Tour is like the hardest, most difficult tour you can do,” Anthony explains. “It’s boot camp for bands, in a sense. It makes you realize you cannot take a regular tour for granted because you’ve done 26 shows in a row, not knowing what time you’re gonna play. Waking up at 7:30 a.m. and going to sleep at 2 a.m. It really makes you grateful for just doing your own tour and being able to be on your own schedule.” Warped taught them how to be in a band and care for everyone around them who helps to make their sets happen — the real rock stars are the roadies and crew people — and, as Mitchel says, echoing many years’ worth of Warped Tour musicians, “You work out which of the bands really aren’t good people.” 

Though they’re humble and modest, it’s not a surprise to them that they ascended during those shows — they were the odd ones out. “We were definitely the weird ones, while they were all still playing punk enough music,” Mitchel says. “We were doing a lot of programmed drums mixed with that rock element. We always like to dress up, and we were the only ones wearing the type of clothes we were wearing. It was like school where people are like, ‘Oh, who are these posers? Oh…oh, actually, they’re very nice.” The crowds, too, were responsive to that: “I mean, who likes mundane stuff!” Anthony believes they came in a long line of seemingly oddball, off-genre artists who used that tour to surprise kids across the country. “Some of the biggest artists coming out of Warped Tour are the ones that were not in the same room. I mean, look at someone like Katy Perry. She came out of the Warped scene, and she was so drastically different to all that,” Anthony says. “Eminem did Warped Tour, too!” 

[Christian Anthony of Chase Atlantic / Photo by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

DESCRIBING THE CHASE ATLANTIC SOUND ISN’T EASY — it’s equal parts the Weeknd, Issues and the Neighbourhood. It’s rock, alternative, hip-hop, R&B, trap and psychedelic — and a careful listener could probably pick out more. That’s exactly what the fans outside say they love about this group — which, in a world where artists are historically berated for changing up their sonic style, speaks just as much to the eclectic and frenetic listening habits of Gen Z, as it does to Chase Atlantic’s experimentalism and understanding of their audience of peers. 

“Our sound is constantly evolving, and it maybe does seem like huge leaps and bounds to the outside world,” Mitchel explains. “We write and produce everything ourselves, so we’ve always been exploring and creating new styles of music. Whatever feels right in the stomach, really.” They’re aware that when the results are presented to people, it seems like the songs pose another drastic musical mix-up, but to them, it’s far from the truth.

Anthony wants to assure fans that from inside the Chase Atlantic machine, the sonic progression feels natural, almost second nature. “Some of the first songs that blew up were written when we were 18, 19,” he says. “So, it’s actually been a slow change of us growing up over the past five, six years.” Even within the band’s latest album, 2021’s BEAUTY IN DEATH, there is variation. “That highlights our [personal] transition from the start of the pandemic to toward the end. At first, it was fun to be inside, and then toward the end, it got a little bit more vulnerable. We were unsure of when it was going to end and what the future was for Chase Atlantic. So that’s why the sound changes based off what’s going on.”

But Clinton is quick to add that didn’t mean the band were calling it quits. “The pandemic caused a lot of uncertainty for us not knowing exactly how long it would last and what our fate would be living full time in the States,” he explains. “We decided to power through and keep making an album that we were proud of, knowing that if we kept working hard at what we loved, it would ultimately pay off in some way or another.”

[Clinton Cave of Chase Atlantic / Photo by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

Mitchel excitedly interjects from the floor. “[The music] is only gonna keep changing, evolving and growing. And that’s the beauty of it. And the core fanbase are there for it, really. They’re definitely not against it.” 

Their next album is currently being written, with 21 songs floating around to be honed and whittled down. This year they’ll go to Lake Tahoe to record and escape the Los Angeles noise when they’ve decided the direction the record will go in. “We got a lot of ammunition. We haven’t created the weapon for it,” Mitchel grins. They don’t want to speak too much about it because it really is in a moldable state at the moment, but it’s their favorite stage of the creative process. For now, these live shows are at the top of their minds. 

This run of London gigs was supposed to be happening at Brixton Academy, where, tragically, crowd-crushing recently led to two people being killed. When it was announced that the 5,000-capacity venue would be closed for the foreseeable future, the shows were rescheduled to the Apollo, a bigger venue, with extra tickets for sale that were snapped up by fans almost immediately. They’ll also be playing Reading and Leeds Festival this year for the second time, but moved far up the bill. “I have no doubt that Reading and Leeds will be a huge success,” Mitchel says. “After all that shit that went down in Brixton — and condolences to the family members — and then to change venues not thinking we’re even going to come to London and then have these three shows sold out… that’s a good indication of what Reading and Leeds should be like.” 

And Chase Atlantic consider their British fans to be some of their favorites. “They know how to enjoy themselves. They know how to go to a show. I feel like they put on more of a show than we do,” Anthony says. “The U.K. is all about going to see live music. Some of the greatest venues in the world are here. And also, because we don’t get over here that often, they really take full advantage when we are here.” 

[Mitchel Cave of Chase Atlantic / Photo by Jordan Kelsey Knight]

ONSTAGE, TWO HOURS LATER, Chase Atlantic bounce out to “STRANGER THINGS,” and the sort of noise from girls reserved for Harry Styles erupts. As the first chorus starts, the entire crowd on the floor and in the seating area where almost no one is using said seats is on their feet jumping. During “BEAUTY IN DEATH,” Mitchel, wearing a freshly steamed baseball shirt with his nickname Mitty on the back, takes off his hat, revealing his full head of plaits to rapturous screams. Two girls behind me in matching pink crop tops shout, already half-hoarse, every word. At one point, the words “[inaudible singing]” appear on the projector at the front of the stage, but it’s more like inaudible screaming/shouting/total mayhem. 

Were they nervous about tonight? “Nah,” Mitchel says upstairs with a smile before they split off to watch their support acts and start their preshow routine. “This is a dream job. It’s difficult as fuck, but it’s a dream.” He looks at Anthony on the sofa and the rest of the band. “It’s like High School Musical: We’re all in this together.” If this snapshot into their lives right now is any indicator, they’re taking this devoted — growing — following with them wherever they choose to go.