Who are The Audreys?

After bursting onto the scene in 2006 with their critically acclaimed debut long-player Between Last Night and Us, ARIA award winning band The Audreys released their much anticipated sophomore album When the Flood Comes in April of this year. Debuting in the Top 20 on the ARIA Chart, this is an album of lyrical and sonic beauty that expands their musical template beyond the alt-country-tinged instrumentation and smoky pop of their gorgeous debut.

Hailing from Adelaide, South Australia, The Audreys feature sassy songstress Taasha Coates and her four dapper suited sidekicks. The Audreys, in intimate ‘trio’ mode, will tour with Pete Murray across Australia in August and September of ’08.

Taasha Coates (voice, piano, ukulele), Tristan Goodall (guitars, banjo), Toby Lang (drums),
Michael Green (violin, lapsteel), Lyndon Gray (upright & electric bass).
photographer: Peter Fisher

**please visit our press page for downloadable press pics**

What are people saying about When the Flood Comes?

"From the opening strains of "Chelsea Blues" (presumably named after the Chelsea Hotel, where songwriters Taasha Coates and Tristan Goodall resided for a stretch while writing this album), it's clear that The Audreys' second is all about going deeper."
Rolling Stone, Australia

"Though there’s no doubt that the extensive road seasoning hardened The Audreys into the band capable of making a record of the quality of When the Flood Comes, their decision to draw breath, drink some whiskey and stare down their expectations and pressures has produced an album of inspired songwriting; an exhalation of stock-taking that is powerfully black in the corners."
Martin Jones, Rhythms Magazine

"This LP should be the standard that all 'roots' music adheres to; this is the real deal kids. It's folk, it's rock, it's grunge, it's classical and it's blues, but above all, it's indescribably beautiful and stunningly original. The Audreys are where it's at."
Citysearch, Sydney

"Taasha's voice remains pivotal to the strength of The Audreys, as she delivers a performance that affirms her as Australia's best female talent."
9/10 Tsunami Magazine, Brisbane

If Adelaide five-piece The Audreys impressed pundits and punters alike with their debut album Between Last Night and Us, they're set to floor all comers with the passion-soaked minimalism of When The Flood Comes. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."
Matt Connors, Daily Telegraph, Sydney

"A strong return for the local blues and roots act with songs such as Paradise City dripping with whisky and oozing with front woman Taasha Coates' sexy swagger. Confident and powerful, When The Flood Comes is everything we expected and a little more."
The Advertiser, Adelaide

"There's great chemistry at work here in the melding of banjo, violin and an assortment of rootsy accoutrements with Coates' fragile, breathy vocals. Fill up the glass and enjoy"
Iain Sheddon, The Weekend Australian

read full reviews

Biography

“There’s a big change coming and it won’t be long, before we’re all in this together.”

For every up, there is a down. For black, there is white. For day, lurks night.  Or so The Audreys discovered following the warm embrace garnered by their debut longplayer, Between Last Night and Us.

The album catapulted The Audreys on to the national stage and saw them collect the 2006 ARIA Award for Best Blues & Roots Album, but the accompanying success left them high and dry in a songwriting drought. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Taasha Coates says it took her and fellow songwriter/guitarist Tristan Goodall an age to get back to writing.

“We were just a little Adelaide band that made an album, then suddenly we were touring constantly and playing on bigger and bigger stages. Everything was new,” Taasha explains. “It was all so overwhelming and took up so much of our time that is was 18 months before we wrote another song.”

But in a universe controlled by dynamic balance, the drought was broken by a flood. Rather than a metaphorical flood of songs, it was a soaking of sentiment – a darkness, a foreboding – that seeps into the corners of their sophomore album, When the Flood Comes.

“The flood as in the end of the world, you know, the apocalypse,” Taasha reveals.

Not exactly what you’d expect from the Adelaide five-piece, comprising Coates (voice, piano, melodica, ukulele), Goodall (acoustic and electric guitars, banjo), Michael Green (violin, lap steel, backing vocals), Lyndon Gray (upright and electric bass) and Toby Lang (drums).

Yet on When the Flood Comes, The Audreys shatter all expectations. They deliver an album of lyrical and sonic beauty that expands their musical template beyond the alt-country-tinged instrumentation and smoky pop of their gorgeous debut. Musically, it’s a revelation that almost defies categorisation. It aches. It breaks. And it drips with passion.

“We always knew it would be a different album because the band is different, and bigger, but sound wise we were never sure what to expect from it,” Taasha says.

The dark portent that undercuts opening track Chelsea Blues and reappears on many of the 12 tracks showcases how much The Audreys have grown as a band.

“There are certainly lyrical ideas that run through the whole album,” Tristan agrees.

It’s there in Chelsea Blues. It resides in the album’s title track and in Here He Lies, a funeral march written for a friend who died young. Or in Sally & the Preacher, a salvation song where hope is found in the bottom of a bottle.

“Quite a few of the songs are about drinking,” Tristan confesses.

The first two songs penned ended up being two of the album’s standout cuts, the first radio single Paradise City and the aforementioned Here He Lies.

“Paradise City has changed a lot from the version we’d started playing live but it’s changed for the better,” Taasha says. “I wrote the lyrics for that with my sister, Danika … there are a couple of tracks on the album that we wrote together. She’s my lyrical sounding board.”

With the drought broken, Taasha and Tristan decided to tickle their creative juices with an overseas songwriting sojourn, taking in a visit to Nashville and a stay at New York’s famous The Hotel Chelsea (aka the Chelsea Hotel), digs that have housed everyone from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin to William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas. (It also lives in infamy as the place where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols allegedly stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death in 1978.)

“Songwriting can be really hard emotionally,” Taasha reveals, “and we just like to string ourselves out on it. We sat in a seedy hotel room and drank too much and fought with each other. It’s part of the process. We’d spend the days writing in the hotel and then we’d go out at night and hit a bar or something.”

“We wrote a bunch there at the Chelsea,” Tristan says of Chelsea Blues, the raunchy Lay Me Down, When the Flood Comes, Small Things and Anchor – a tender sea-shanty. “Then we were really on a roll so we came home and wrote a bunch more.” Sally & the Preacher, Closing Time, the ethereal Head so Heavy, the pedal steel infused More to a Sinner and Songbird, a Bad Seeds inspired epic, were all completed at the band’s rehearsal studio in the Adelaide Hills.

Once the songs were written, The Audreys entered Yikesville Studios in Melbourne to work with producer Shane O’Mara, who also crafted Between Last Night and Us.

“It took a lot longer than the first album and it was a lot harder. If the third album is this difficult it may be my last,” Taasha jokes.

“The bed tracks started to go down quite easily,” Tristan recalls. “But as we got into tracking and layering up parts things started to get more and more involved.”

That time amounted to three sessions at Yikesville, with The Audreys determined to get the album right.

“We’d go away for a few weeks and come back, often with fresh ideas. Sometimes we just wanted to go back and re-do stuff because we weren’t happy with it or wanted to try a different approach,” Taasha says.

The Audreys’ determination to nail the longplayer goes beyond what was laid to tape. The artwork incorporates evocative original paintings, crafted by award-winning graphic design team Debaser, who have worked with Powderfinger, The Cat Empire and created The Audreys’ eye-catching Sheets to the Wind tour poster.

Now comes the next phase for The Audreys as the band prepare to take When the Flood Comes out on the road.

“We’re really looking forward to adding these new songs to our live set. We’re always going to be the quietest act at the rock festivals and the loudest act at the folk festivals,” Taasha muses “but it somehow seems to work. I guess we’ve just got our own music.”

Our own music.

Three simple words that capture the essence of The Audreys and When the Flood Comes.

click for a printable copy of The Audreys' bio

Let's start at the very beginning...

"I've gone a bit country since I met you baby, I used to be so rock-n'-roll..."
Banjo & Violin, The Audreys

It's winter 2003. A wild storm descends upon the beautiful Macedon Ranges in country Victoria. Musicians Taasha Coates and Tristan Goodall roll into town like a lonesome highway, tumbleweed at their heel. They berth their beat-up, bright yellow 1974 kombi van and seek refuge in the nearest winery. A wise and fortuitous move indeed, because inside they find a group of enthusiastic bluegrass players jamming by a mid-winter fireside. As the day wears on and the storm shows no sign of clearing, they are invited to join in and soon find themselves falling hopelessly for that melancholy banjo sound. They never look back, their pop song-writing sensibilities forever sullied by that delightful country twang. I mean look at these two, they were bound to meet up and start a country band sooner or later...

Taasha aged 3, with her favourite chook

Tristan aged 4, with his favourite cowboy shirt

Although they met in Adelaide, Taasha and Tristan had been living for some years in Melbourne and playing acoustic gigs at pubs and cafes around town, but they moved back to their hometown to get this new project off the ground. Naming themselves The Audreys to give the band a nice old timey vibe, and because of Taasha's fascination with Audrey Hepburn, the duo starting looking around for other players. They first sought the contribution of Tristan's brother Cam, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, then did their first gig with fellow South Australians The Yearlings in June 2004. Here's their first ever promo shot, and yes they still have that kombi.

A promo shot of The Audreys from 2004

Violin player and singer Michael Green (known about town as Mikey G) then joined the band and they began feverishly writing and gigging. Performing at WOMADelaide in March 2005, they created quite a buzz with their captivating performance and independent EP, You And Steve McQueen, and then their debut album recorded later that year brought The Audreys all the right kind of attention.

Between Last Night and Us was recorded in June 2005 in the intimate setting of producer Shane O'Mara's backyard Melbourne studio, Yikesville. O'Mara and the band captured an intoxicating blend of old-timey and pop-conscious sounds with an army of guitars, banjos, violins, dobros, mandolins and anything else they could find with strings on it, all held together by Taasha's assured and captivating voice. Before the release of the album Tristan's brother Cam left the band to pursue his burgeoning acting career, and double bass player Lyndon Gray and drummer Toby Lang joined the band to complete the line-up. The album was released in February through a licensing deal with ABC Music/Warner, and The Audreys hit the road with performances at clubs and festivals around the country.

Taasha recording vocals on the band's debut

In February 2006 The Audreys flew to Texas to perform at the North American Folk Alliance Convention where they were spotted by North American festival directors and signed to venerable Canadian label True North Records, home of Bruce Cockburn. True North released Between Last Night and Us in June, and The Audreys toured through Europe and Canada in May, June and July. They then returned to Australia for a series of sold out dates around Australia on their 2006 Winter Tour, proudly presented by Triple J’s Home & Hosed.

The Audreys in Texas for the North American Folk Alliance Convetion,
with Kevin the Bull Riding Chamion

Then one crazy October night in Sydney, five Audreys sat at a table in four of their finest old suits and one gorgeous gown surrounded by their peers, happily star spotting and enjoying their champagne, when their names were called out and they found themselves onstage accepting the ARIA Award for Best Blues and Roots Album. Needless to say much celebrating ensued.

Accepting the ARIA Award for Best Blues & Roots Album,
October 2006

This was followed by a string of shows and summer festivals, then The Audreys reeled into 2007 with the release of the single and video for 'Banjo & Violin', the third single to be lifted from Between Last Night and Us after 'Oh Honey' and You & 'Steve McQueen'. May and June saw the band on another whirlwind jaunt around our great land on their "Sheets to the Wind" tour, their final tour for the year. Then they teamed up once again with producer Shane O'Mara to tackle the serious business of a follow up album. See above.

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