This Good Friday just got a whole lot better with the announcement that Australian country/blues duo The Audreys will be re-releasing all three of their ARIA winning records in a package suitably titled Collected.
Coinciding with their appearance at this weekend’s Byron Bay’s Bluesfest, Collected is comprised of Between Last Night and Us (2006), When the Flood Comes (2008) and Sometimes The Stars (2010). Usually reserved for 10-year anniversaries or as a bookend to a band’s career, Tristan Goodall explains why The Audreys have chosen to release Collected only three albums in.
“It turned out that each of our records had won an ARiA for best Blues & Roots. And we thought it might be a good idea to just to put them all together and release them as one package.”
Collected gives fans a chance to gather this particular chapter of the duo’s music together. But does combining their pasts efforts mean a new direction is in the winds for The Audreys?
“We’ve always done something a little bit different… with each of our records. So I don’t know if it’s an opportunity to then legitimately go and do something outrageously different. But you know, you never know, maybe…dub step”
As you might well expect from a packaged re-release, there’s a whole disc worth of bonus material. Amongst the demos, live recordings and video exists The Audreys latest single Train Wreck Blues.
“It’s actually one of the first songs that Tasha (Coates) and I wrote. And we played it live in the early days of the band and then rested it and it just never came back into the set.”
“When Tasha and I were going through lots of old stuff to find some rare material to have as the bonus tracks, we stumbled on it… It’s actually a pretty interesting recording for us, it’s got a little bit of a different sound and we were really happy with it. So we had it remastered and it came out really well. It’s got this nice kind of crushed drum sound to I really like “
Lyrically Train Wreck Blues both celebrates and laments the freedoms of a working musician: a lifestyle that may afford you the chance to see world while simultaneously detaching you from friends and family.
“It is a hard thing, especially when you’re touring a lot. It can be hard to stay in touch with people that you care about. I think it’s easy to do (lose touch) when you first start touring as a musician that’s on the road a lot. Then you develop strategies as you get better at it (touring) for keeping the people you love close, in some way.”
Collected will also feature the music video for the single Sometimes The Stars. A truly moving animated short, which was nominated for best music video at this year’s Byron Bay Film Festival.
“It was made by a mate of ours from Adelaide who we’ve known for many years and we’ve wanted to do something together for a long time. When we were demoing tracks off the third record… he particularly loved that song and thought he could do something. He came back to us with a creative pitch and we just went ‘that sounds fantastic’ and just let him go for it.”
“It took him and a couple of dudes I think about 3 or 4 months to create the animations and we were really chuffed. I think it was gorgeous. It’s a short film really.”
As for the rest of 2012 The Audreys will embark on a tour tentatively scheduled for the end of June, beginning July. As for the progress of a new record…
“We’re gonna make that Dub-step record (laughter).”
Who knows, maybe next year The Audreys will win the ARIA for best dance album…
The Audreys – Sometimes The Stars
The Audreys Collected will be released April 6, 2012 and is a package containing the records Sometimes The Stars, When the Flood Comes and Between Last Night and Us. Together with these award-winning albums is a rare collection of demos, b-sides, live tracks, videos and a previously unreleased single Train Wreck Blues. Collected comes in digipack with a unique digital code to access this brand new material.
