'I Was At The Bottom': Ceres' New Album Has Changed Frontman Tom Lanyon

Ceres were done. For the past few years, that’s how it seemed to everyone - including the band’s frontman Tom Lanyon. Soon after the success of their second album, 2016’s Drag It Down On You - a dark, reflective work that was in Lanyon’s own words a “big black dark hole” - came the Stretch Ur Skin EP, which gave the band their breakout hit in its title track. Though for all its commercial success, the track, which heavily details the breakdown of a relationship, ultimately caused Lanyon huge personal fallout.

“I’ve made lots of mistakes in the band before, about singing about people in a light that probably didn’t deserve it, and I felt very bad about that in my past and that was almost the end of the band in those days,” he shares. “Stretch Ur Skin, I feel like was a really shitty thing to do to someone.

“I thought the band was finished, to be honest. We were never going to make another record because I just thought I had nothing else to add and I was in a bad mindset. After Stretch Ur Skin, I was just like, ‘Fuck this band, I’m out,’” he continues. “You know, so I was in a bad mindset there too, but something had to change otherwise this album wouldn’t have been. If, personally, if my life hadn’t of changed, then we wouldn’t have got another record.”

“I don’t think I could of just kept bashing myself down into the ground, because after Drag I remember doing interviews, or before Drag when I was doing interviews, and I was like - I was a different person back then - but I was saying, like, ‘I haven’t even scratched the surface of how dark I can get. I’m halfway down the well, I can keep going right down to the bottom.’ 

"And I was just full of shit, that’s not right. I was at the bottom, I didn’t even know it yet."

"And now I’ve finally gotten up to the top and this is album is sort of an artistic representation of that feeling. I’m really proud of it.”

The album Lanyon speaks of is their latest, We Are A Team. Gone is the overwhelming darkness of Drag It Down On You, replaced by a feeling that he describes as “this blue balloon, this super light little feather”. 

When the album’s lead single, Viv In The Front Seat - a track about the early stages of Lanyon’s current relationship - dropped in August last year, it caught many by surprise. Not only were the band back, but even more surprisingly, they were back with music that was positive, buoyant and looked to the future openly.

“I guess it's hard to separate a euphoric feeling of falling in love and positivity. I think obviously they’re like hand in hand, those two things,” he says. “And so just naturally and thematically, the album had to feel that way, I think.

“So none of that was conscious obviously, that was just like a feeling of just trying to get that stuff out through music. But I did speak to a friend of mine Jack [Parsons], who plays in The Pretty Littles, and that was before the album was even an idea of an album, and we had a chat. We were just at the pub having a beer, and he was just like, ‘Aw, man. We’re lucky that we’ve got' - deserved or undeserved, up to you to figure that out - 'a platform to talk to people. Or it’s not even really a platform, but we are lucky enough that people listen to what we say, some people anyway, and care about it.' And he’s like, ‘Do you reckon we have a responsibility to spread a positive message?’

“It kind of took me aback. I was just trying to have a beer at a pub and he’s getting all philosophical on me,” Lanyon laughs. “But he said it in a very Jack from Pretty Littles way, it was so deep but obviously very, just, on the level as well. And it sort of took me aback and I was, ‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Fuck that, we do have a responsibility to’ - you know, there’s a lot of people who are just like, ‘I’m going to sing what I feel and this is me and I don’t care what it does to people, I don’t care.’ And I don’t subscribe to that at all. 

“So the unconscious thing was letting the songs fall out of me after Viv In The Front Seat, and that was all just through the giddy feeling of love. That was more about the catalyst of the record, almost. Like this conscious thing of going, like, 'If we’re ever going to do another record it has to be positive, or it has to just affect a positive change in someone’s life, and not just be a downer, self-serving record.' Because I just didn’t see the use of our band anymore. After Drag, it was just such an all-encompassing record where I just almost killed myself doing it, metaphorically, and I just didn’t see the reason for our band to be anymore.

“I had a triple j interview once and I said, ‘I just don’t see the point of our band. I don’t know if the world needs another male-fronted rock band. What more can we say?’ So if we were ever going to be a band, and if we were ever going to write another record, it had to be something different and, in my mind, had to affect a positive change. And then lo and behold, the universe as it works, I fell in love and these songs fell out, and I’m like, 'This is ticking all the boxes.' I haven’t told Jack though - he might not even remember. But I want to thank him for that because it really did kick start something.”

“For a positive record to come out, that means my mindset’s changed and my life’s changed, and for the better too.”