Eight years and one split since their last one, As It Is are back with a new album. Having realised during the gap how much a part of them music is, Patty Walters and Ben Langford-Biss explain how they're also returning with a new perspective, and a new sense of friendship...
A razorblade once showed Patty Walters how vulnerable he’d become.
“If you nick yourself shaving on blood thinners, you bleed for longer than you would normally,” the As It Is vocalist explains. “I became so aware of how human and vulnerable I was.”
Sat in Hyde Park alongside guitarist Ben Langford-Biss, Patty’s telling K! why I’m So Alive, the triumphant opener of album five, is linked to a blood clot just as much as the synergy underneath his band’s reunion.
“There's very literal lyrics about the pink pills I was taking, ‘You're in my blood, in every part of me’, but to open the record with the sentiment ‘I’m so alive’ became the celebration of the band returning,” he continues. “Reclaiming our project and the joy, because it's such a jubilant, happy and bombastic song.”
“I can almost pinpoint each of our albums to a season,” suggests Ben, prescribing their self-titled fifth, comeback, LP for summer. “The first half of this record is destined for a sunny day: windows down, driving around.”
Mirroring the London heatwave we find ourselves in, the sun is only beginning to rise on As It Is’ new chapter and the grand manner of their comeback .
In January 2024, Patty ended fan speculation and confirmed As It Is’ hiatus, two years after releasing I WENT TO HELL AND BACK and five after Ben’s exit from the band. But nearly three years later, they’ve reformed, reissued their debut, and written album five from the ground up. It all feels like a combination of destiny and miracle.
“When we did start reconnecting, it was going for drinks and hanging out as friends first,” clarifies Ben. “I needed to step away because it was more of a identity crisis, not knowing who I was outside of being Ben from As It Is. I needed to find that.
“That still led me back to music in a different way – doing Bleak Soul and crew stuff – but within that, I learned very quickly that I really struggle to care as much about any art project as I do As It Is.”
“It was so important to write this record, get the band back together, reclaim our brotherhood and our agency,” adds Patty, “because of how painful it was to watch a project that we'd built together crumble and fall apart, when everybody stepped away.
“I basically had one goal since I was 12, which was to be in a band and tour the world. I didn't really have much of a Plan B for myself, I guess, and maybe that's on me. Without [music], my life is over. And then I didn't have music anymore, and I found that my life didn't have to be over.”
Therapy, plus Patty’s work in the charity sector, enabled the frontman to find fulfilment, helping As It Is 2.0 operate in a more relaxed, sustainable fashion, instead of prioritising momentum and saying yes to everything. It perhaps explains the sunshine-fuelled sound of the record, which can seem like a head scratcher on paper. If you’re familiar with the Brighton boys, it’s probably for 2018’s MCR-fuelled The Great Depression, or breakout 2015 debut Never Happy, Ever After, which helped them ride the crest of the British pop-punk wave alongside Neck Deep and Trash Boat.
But times have changed. “Being back and feeling right again, that's the colour palette, the theme of the record,” Patty explains.
“This album is a lot more hopeful,” nods Ben. “But songs like Ruin My Life are a sarcastic twist on the idea of returning to the band. ‘Is this us ruining our lives by doing it?’”
‘But what I’d give to feel it one more time’ Patty asks on that track, cueing into a communal pop-rock chorus and speaking his band’s revival into existence.
When As It Is did re-emerge in late 2024, the rousing fan reception vindicated their decision-making in a heartbeat. Despite the issues around entitlement and expectation that exist in modern-day fan culture, As It Is believe their hardcore following empathise with the values underpinning this reunion.
“There's a fear now that bands have a pressure to stay relevant,” says Ben. “I’m grateful we got to be a band for a bit in the OG days, when Instagram was still just a chronological photo posting app. Paramore don't say anything, they just fucked off for four years – and that's fine. I'm not saying that we will fuck off for four years, but you never know what's going to happen in someone's personal life. Having that open dialogue and respect for each other's needs and lives does mean that it will be a lot more sustainable.”
Recorded on the South Coast with producer Kel Pinchin (“The first time working with a producer who was the same age as us”) As It Is fostered a studio environment for LP5 rooted in comfort and confidence. Having previously recorded on tight, time-pressured schedules in America, this loose approach slotted in with everyday life and enabled the band to honour their own mantra, says Ben: “No-one asked us to write a record other than us.”
Name-dropping Goo Goo Dolls and New Radicals as some key references, the album is flooded with acoustics, piano and jangly pop ballads like Marilyn and Last At The Party. Given the emphasis the pair place on finding purpose outside of music, it’s difficult to know – like I’m So Alive – how far the record’s lyrics are tied to the band’s story versus isolated events in their personal lives. On Last At The Party, we put to Patty and Ben the words of Josh Franceschi, the morning after You Me At Six announced their split: “You don’t want to be the last ones hanging around at the party.“
Ben’s response underlines why a reformed As It Is are flipping that idea on its head.
“Growing up, I was like, ‘I can't imagine being 80 and still playing Dial Tones,’“ he says. “But as I get older, I'm like, ‘I'm gonna be 80 and still playing Dial Tones, aren't I?’ And I'm gonna enjoy it. Whether that's just [us four] in a room, whether we still are fortunate enough that people will come and see us, and our fans will be the same age as us, and there'll be seated shows. It can be about us or being the last one clinging on to any form of relationship.”
Right now, the As It Is party is in full swing. For the closing track, they ensure you leave with a gaping smile and a pocket full of sunshine, daring to dream and ask, ‘What if it all works out?’ It's a question that transforms the fearful, self-deprecating themes of their earlier material into a message of manifestation for their future. Ben points out that, compared to The End, the last song on The Great Depression, the tank is once again full of hope.
“Hoping is vulnerable,” agrees Patty. “To actually care and put your hope on the line is bold. This is the new chapter: us in our 30s, trying to be a little older, wiser and braver, believing that it could work out, maybe for the first time in this band's history. We're singing about pain in the past tense now, trying to put that in the rearview mirror a little bit more and find something brighter in our 30s.”
That, in a nutshell, is the blueprint for As It Is to move onward. Still the same band people fell in love with in the 2010s, but one that’s rejuvenated, in both sound and perspective. Patty hits the nail on the head.
“We’re trying to paint similar pictures with different colours.”
As It Is is released on July 17 via FLG. Get your exclusive vinyl and T-shirt bundle now.
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