[INTERVIEW] The Audreys, ‘Hopefully we’ll come back’

The Audreys have blown Australia away since their formation in 2004, pulling in a haul of three ARIAs and releasing four records, including their latest album ‘Till My Tears Roll Away. The news that the duo, made of Taasha Coates and Tristan Goodall, are taking a break after their last set of gigs this January and February seems all the more poignant then as 2016 is the 10 year anniversary of debut Between Last Night And Us.

“It’s going to be sad, but hopefully we’ll come back and make another record in a few years, so that’s the plan anyway,” Coates says about their final shows.

“We first started coming up with plans to do some sort of celebration of 10 years as some sort of tribute. I don’t know, we had all these ridiculous ideas concoted over too many drinks no doubt!” shares the vocalist.

“In the end we both decided that we didn’t have another record just sitting there waiting…it’s a really tough business. So you’ve got to absolutely believe that you need to do it, that you have something to say.”

Chatting to Taasha on a hot day in December, she laughs as she reminices about the evolution of The Audreys. “My whole career has been with Tristan. Before we started The Audreys we played covers together. Apart from [uni], my whole performance career has been with him. And the first time I ever wrote was with him ‘cause I didn’t think I could write.”

Referring to Goodall as her “best friend”, the hiatus is timely for both members of the duo. “Tristan lives in Melbourne and I live in Adelaide…I have a young family and he has a girlfriend, and we both spend a lot of time away, and it just feel like a good time to have a bit of a rest,” she explains.

That being said, ‘rest’ might be a loose term for Coates, who is embarking on her own solo record which she says (in stereotypical slang) will have a ‘country’ flavour. “So clearly I don’t know how to really take a break. But it’s a record that I just really started writing…That’s going to be really exciting and scary.”

While 2016 is a year of unknowns for Coates and Goodall, The Audreys journey so far has been nothing short of phenomenal. Picking a highlight proves a little tough though. “F*ck! one highlight?” she exclaims before sharing. “It’s such a privilege to get to do it for so long, we certainly never thought that that would happen.”

“Your goal posts change all the time. So you have a little career highlight when you get booked for your first festival….[and] the first time I heard our song being played on the radio. We were so excited we had to pull the car over!”

Playing their last Melbourne gig at Sunset Sounds on January 10, Coates’ passion for music drives home the sincerity of the duo. “When you write songs and record them for an album, they have their first life…or maybe when you write them they have their first life, and when you record them they have their second,” she says. “But then when you tour them they take on a whole other life again, and they become something quite different and your relationship with the songs changes….often it really flows up those other new paths and ends up somewhere quiet different.”

Catch The Audreys for the final Melbourne gig of 2016 on January 10 at Sunset Sounds, Victoria Gardens from 6pm. All Sunset Sounds shows are free to the public.