When Ben left that day, Patty sent him a text almost immediately. He’d had fun. He liked the song they’d written. In spite of that, where he was, it was too much too soon. In the end, it was the catalyst for Patty starting therapy. “I needed to really heal from the big stuff in a professional, ongoing, purposeful kind of way,” he reflects, sat in front of an impressive bookshelf at home. Much of that healing was directly concerned with the decade he’d spent in As It Is, spinning through cycles of triumph and despair, clocking up miles on the road for 200 days a year at the expense of his mental health and the concept of having any sort of life outside of the band’s bubble. Inevitably, it burned him out. There was also everything else: “A lot of stuff I’d been struggling with about myself, my childhood, things I’d struggled with that I’d written about in As It Is.” Eventually, things started looking very different. “I’d learned to enjoy who I was and find happiness outside of music for the first time in my life.”
After so much growth, when discussions about reuniting began to become fruitful, Patty approached the idea with some understandable trepidation. “It was something that actually scared the shit out of me,” he admits. “I was like, ‘Is this just going to be regression? Are we going to go back to some things that had stopped making me happy after 10 years of doing it?’ I realised that I could continue to make really good life decisions, but also introduce something back into my life, which was also the healthiest outlet I’ve ever known. I still haven’t found a way to show the world my heart and my soul more effectively than I have with music.”
Launching from zero to 60 is how everything in As It Is’ world seems to happen, according to Ben. Their reunion was no different. In the past year since Patty and Ben reconvened with bassist Ali Testo and drummer Patrick Foley (just Foley to his mates), they’ve released rarities collection A Decade Uneventful, a 10-year reworking of their 2015 debut album Never Happy, Ever After with a special guest on each track, and played it in full at four shows, including Slam Dunk. Later this month, they’re doing it again on a full tour. From the silly moments in the studio on TikTok to the elation beaming from their faces when they’ve stepped back onstage, the joy of their return is obvious. “It feels good to do it on our terms, at our pace, which is faster than expected,” says Ben. “We’re just happy to be around each other all the time. Writing has been really, really good.”