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Features High Water Mark Monday, May 26, 2008 The Audreys exceed all expectations with a triumphant record album and a refined live show to do it justice. By Martin Jones.
The Audreys step onto the stage in the sweltering heat of the Mojo tent at Bluesfest. Their nervous energy is palpable. It’s the debut public airing of a bunch of new songs from their second album. They have something to prove – to themselves more than anybody.
As beguiling as their debut recording was, there were times when I had my doubts about The Audreys’ versatility as a live band. So here at Bluesfest I want them to shine, though I’m well prepared for the inevitable disappointment that every zealous music fan encounters in pinning their unreasonable hopes on an unwitting band of kids just trying to bash out a few tunes for fun.
Singer Taasha Coates loses her regal composure briefly with a cough and a choke
(a stage fan doused her in a cloud of dust) and has to glide off stage momentarily (she later confesses to grabbing a slug of whiskey from her bag side of stage, what a
girl!).  It’s a brief interruption in a mesmerizing show.
Sure the impeccably groomed and graceful Coates is the centre of attention, but I find myself regarding the rest of the band with renewed admiration. Clearly inspired by his adventures with producer/guitarist Shane O’Mara, Tristan Goodall is brimming with confidence and a deeper, richer bag of Ry Cooder-like guitar tones. His big, clear notes stand up louder and prouder. Mikey Green’s musicianship has taken on a new significance in the band – his slide guitar lines lend melody and mood and his backing vocals are everywhere. He even steps up to sing a duet that sees he and Coates sounding remarkably like Mimi and Alan from Low. Wow!
Toby Lang’s drumming is tight, tender and unobtrusive and Lyndon Gray
switches from big, wobbling electric bass to nimble, flighty upright. The rich sounds combine powerfully through the big festival PA and drift shimmering into the crowd.
At the centre of it all, Coates, grinning like the Cheshire Cat’s elated sister, exhibits a new level of vocal control that takes the whole sound up a notch. Hitting dead centre of every note, she controls her vibrato like a jazz singer, the tonal fluctuations pulsing through the
songs’ slo-mo melodies.
The graceful darkness of the new songs combine with this imposing sonic landscape to lend the band a new authority – hell, they’re almost tough! ‘Yes! Yes!
Exactly what they needed to do!’ I clap my hands together. ‘Perfect! They’ve toughened up without losing their precious elegance.’
I slather my praise over the band later after the show and they stand there, still grinning, but politely bemused. Maybe they’re just playing it cool – ‘Tougher? Louder? Sure, there was never any doubt we could deliver – leave that rootsy pop tag behind and grow, nay mature, into a great band.’
Maybe they always did have complete faith in each other. Thing is, they had so many people telling them how difficult that dreaded second album would be, it would have been enough to shake the firmest faith. 
The phenomenal reception to The Audreys’ debut album Between Last Night And Us was a surprise to everybody – including its authors. It could have been a fluke – Coates will admit to such thoughts herself. An inexperienced band from Adelaide, they mixed up their love of country and traditional instruments with a shiny pop sensibility and stumbled into Shane O’Mara’s welcoming arms.
The resulting debut won them a 2006 ARIA Award for Best Blues & Roots Album and propelled them on a seemingly never-ending schedule of touring and press encounters in which unimaginative interviewers persisted in asking them if they were worried about how to follow up the debut’s success.
“People want me to worried about the second album,” singer Coates sighed at my own inane inquiry back then. “Every single interview I’ve done in the last few months, someone’s asked me a question like that. But I’m trying to KNOCK YOU ALL OUT so there.”
Prophetic. Yes, Taash, you’ve KNOCKED ME OUT. The new album, When The Flood Comes, is a triumph. But it turns out our projected desires affected Coates to the point where she, indeed, did become worried about the second album. And now we’re gloating over it! The album bio makes a big deal out of a jittery writing block faced by songwriters Coates and Goodall when finally taking time from incessant touring to apply themselves to conjuring up album number two. Was there really a crisis? Interestingly, Coates and Goodall have different takes on it (rewarding my inspired decision to interview them separately).
“It’s just there, you cannot avoid it,” Coates says of that second album mythology. “You would have to be such a strong person to completely avoid that I think, because it just is a fact that a lot of bands will have a well-received first album and then you never hear from them again. It just happens all the time. And of course there’s all that other stuff about how you do have a few years to write your first and then we spent six months making the second, and that includes writing it. So it was pretty… I found it really hard. We just kind of sat down and stared at each other and went, ‘I don’t know. Have you got an idea?’ ‘No, have you?’”
Agreeing with Coates that the band found it impossible to write on the road, Goodall recalls, “we thought ‘we’ll settle in at home’ – that Taasha and I would have a place in the Adelaide Hills thinking that out our back door there’s vineyards and cows, and we’re thinking ‘this is going to be great. We’re going to be able to hole-up here and write the record.’ But it just kind of didn’t happen. I think when you’ve just come off that much touring you’re still a little restless. And so we were initially, not concerned, but we thought ‘maybe this isn’t going to happen here like this as we thought it might’. And that’s why we went over to New York. You know, the phone keeps ringing and there’s dishes to do and people drop in, so while we were never really in doubt, it was just a matter of finding the right environment to kick start it.”
And when they found that catalyst, the songs came in a flood?
“Ohoho, nicely put Marty!” Goodall chortles before revealing that they wound up with over twenty contenders for the album in the space of a few months. (No, really, I genuinely thought that the album title was a cleverly designed double-meaning referencing the eventual deluge of creativity. Was I wrong?). Sometimes your flaws can turn out to be invaluable strengths, especially in making music. Who would have wanted yet another bunch of songs about lonely nights in strange towns and days driving between shows? 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. No, this is not the frivolous young rootsy pop band that I’m sure many hoped The Audreys would become.
As Goodall mentions, he and Coates fled overseas pursuing inspiration, stopping off in Nashville on an instrument New York’s infamous The Chelsea Hotel, credited in When The Flood Comes’ opening track ‘Chelsea Blues’. Even before investigating the lyrics too closely, the album’s tougher, more sparse sonic texture suggest portent. It certainly flavours lines like “drowning’s not that bad if you breathe and just let go” (‘Small Things’) and the title track’s “with a joy in her heart and a needle in her hand” – you’re definitely not thinking that’s a knitting needle! And portent is presented in the album’s very opening lines: “There’s a big change coming down the highway, I’m not talking ‘bout the weather.”
You can read the full feature in May Rhythms.
When The Flood Comes is available on ABC Music/Warner. The Audreys tour nationally throughout May and June, full dates in the Gig Guide.
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