The Audreys play Soundlounge Thursday 22 May, The Zoo Friday 23 May and the Great Northern Hotel Wednesday 28 May 2008.
After wrestling the Blues and Roots ARIA Award from the likes of Bernard Fanning and Lior a few years back with their debut album Between Last Night And Us, Adelaide quintet The Audreys recently returned to reclaim their place atop a congested Australian roots scene with their excellent follow-up, When The Flood Comes.
A refinement of all that was wonderful about BLNAU, When The Flood Comes matches its predecessor, and then some. It’s a rich, earthy and passionate album bristling with an array of rootsy accoutrements and subtle pop melodies. Recorded in Melbourne, the new album has been enjoying due acclaim critically and commercially since its release late last month.
We’re really proud of it,” guitarist/banjo picker Tristan Goodall says. “The consensus is it’s different from our first record, which I’m happy to agree to. But people seem to think that it’s different in a different way – everyone’s got a different take on it, which is great. I love that people can get their own thing out of it; we try and create songs that appeal to people in different ways.
I’d definitely call it a progression, an evolution. The first album was recorded without a rhythm section in the band – we added some drums and bass later. With When The Flood Comes we had that core in the band and they were there in the studio with us right from the start. It has a different sound, even just for that reason.”
he band toured relentlessly in the two years since their first album – even building a receptive fan base in Canada – solidifying their sound and performance flair. However, Goodall admits that this also made it hard to turn the focus to their next album.
I’d be lying if I said we didn’t feel some pressure,” he concurs. “We’d been touring constantly and we’re quite devoted to playing the songs live and reinterpreting them live. That kind of expanded out and we ended up really not thinking much about a second album.
I know some bands can write on the road but we can’t, so when it came time to actually sit down and go, ‘Right, we have to start this album two process now’, it was quite daunting. In effect, we had a completely clean slate, so it was daunting and exciting. “When we first started to write we were just lacking inspiration and nothing was happening – we ended up pottering round the garden and doing anything but write songs. And that’s how we took off to New York for a little while, then things started to happen and it really got a roll on.”
he Big Apple provided the creative spark that opened the floodgates for Goodall and primary songwriting partner and vocalist Taasha Coates.
It’s where we wrote basically the core of the album,” Goodall explains. “When we found we couldn’t write when we got back home off the road we were like ‘What are we gonna do?’. Something had to be done, so that was when we took off to New York. “Then we went down to Nashville and saw about a million bands in about five days and went back to New York and wrote some more. After that we had what we saw would be the big pick up for the record.”
he city’s influence on WTFC reveals itself from square one with foreboding opener ‘Chelsea Blues’, written in the legendary Chelsea Hotel. “We were buying a bass guitar at Chelsea Guitars, which is basically at the bottom of the hotel,” Goodall recounts. “We walked past the Chelsea Hotel and thought, ‘Let’s go in for a look’.
We found out it’s like the cheapest place in town, partly because it’s a falling down junk heap. It’s really seedy and cheap, I’m sure you can get some extensive rooms in there, but we just went with the cheapest option with the bathroom down the hall. “It was great for us ‘cos in the mornings we’d duck down and grab a six-pack and shove it in the sink with some ice, write throughout the day and then take off at night and go have a few martinis.”
ith WTFC debuting in the Top 20 on the ARIA Album chart – the first time the band has had an album in the ARIA charts at all – the drinks will surely continue to flow for The Audreys as they pack their bags and return to the road for another extensive live jaunt.
Absolutely!” says a jovial Goodall. “We’re in rehearsal now, bringing the songs back into a new life, which is different to how we recorded them but not hugely different. It’s been fun picking which ones from the new album we’re gonna play. We’re not gonna do them all but we’re gonna do a fair chunk.
We’re hoping to get back to Canada again soon, so between here and there I think we’ll be pretty busy.”
When The Flood Comes out through ABC/Warner.
