WOMAD

The Audreys

From Australia

Their debut album 'Between Last Night and Us' thrust The Audreys onto the national stage and earned the 2006 ARIA Award for Best Blues & Roots Album, though its success left the Adelaide quintet marooned 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. It was all so overwhelming and took up so much of our time that it was 18 months before we wrote another song." Fortunately, when the songs arrived, they came in a rush, accelerated by an overseas songwriting sojourn to Nashville and New York's famous Hotel Chelsea. The resulting album, 'When the Flood Comes', shatters expectations with lyrical and sonic beauty that expands the band's musical template beyond alt-country instrumentation and smoky pop. Taking the new songs to the road, with Coates and Goodall supported by Michael Green (violin, lap steel), Lyndon Gray (bass) and Toby Lang (drums), The Audreys return to WOMADelaide for the first time in five years. "We're always going to be the quietest act at the rock festivals and the loudest act at the folk festivals," says Taasha, "but it somehow seems to work." The band last appeared at WOMADelaide in 2004.

http://www.theaudreys.com.au/