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. 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, lapsteel, 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.
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