Sydney trio GAUCI are back with a shimmering new single, ‘Come Around’, ahead of the release of their debut mixtape ‘Growing Pains’ – hear the new track and read the band’s interview with NME below.
Out today (March 7), ‘Come Around’ is the third release from the project but, as the band tell NME, it was their first and most formative song in shaping their new sound. Making their name with richly textured electronic pop, the new era of GAUCI is about dialling down the synths and picking up more guitars.
Driven by acoustic guitar and live drums (a first for GAUCI), ‘Come Around’ is an even-handed masterclass in pop, a potent blend of polish and heart. Not surprising for a band comprising three self-professed “audio nerds” – vocalist Antonia Gauci is a Grammy-nominated mix engineer, her brother David plays guitar in Flowertruck and Felix Lush is a do-it-all creative who’s worked with the likes of Brooke Candy, Daine and JamesJamesJames.
Arriving April 4, ‘Growing Pains’ is a long-awaited first mixtape. The band put out a self-titled EP in 2020 and have a cache of singles in their arsenal, but ‘Growing Pains’ is their first fully fledged step into the spotlight since first forming in 2016.
NME caught up with the three Gaucis via Zoom (Felix is an honorary sibling, we’ve been told) to talk about ‘Come Around’, growing as songwriters and the art of a well-deployed swear word.
You’re well and truly on the road to the mixtape with the release of ‘Come Around’. How are you feeling?
David: “Relieved that it’s finally coming. This is probably the oldest song on the mixtape as well. So we’re like, ‘yes!’”
Tell me about that timeline. Where did ‘Come Around’ start from, versus where it’s ended up now?
Felix: “Oh, when did we start it? I feel like it was 2020 or something.”
David: “We were writing basically a new song every week. And then, every couple of weeks we’d go back and redo bits and pieces and all the other ones that we’d done. And it was pretty early on that we did this one, wasn’t it?”
Felix: “I think that was the first song we thought we would use real drums for and it led the whole mixtape in a bit more of that indie realm. So it was informative. I think this song was maybe the first one that we thought was good enough that we’d actually give it a try to make it sound a bit better, take it out of demo land.”
David: “We actually tried recording it with live instruments and then scrapped that because it wasn’t quite right.”
Felix: “We kept on fucking it up. I think we tried to make the guitars too heavy. And then in the end, we landed on something cleaner and I think we kept it pretty, which is nice.”
The three of you are individually really experienced and the GAUCI project has been around for a while. How do you feel kind of going through this process now versus, say, five years ago?
Felix: “I think we’re better at making things a bit simpler. Like, we used to throw the whole kitchen sink. I almost feel like our demos are more complicated than the final result. I think we’re better at just being like, ‘nah, this doesn’t need that,’ and maybe focusing a bit more on ‘is it a good song before we add all the sonic elements?’
“We’re all audio nerds so we just want to tinker. But I think maybe this time we made sure that the song was good and you could hear the song rather than the individual elements.”
Antonia: “Everyone that we show the songs to, they don’t comment on the sounds. They comment on the songwriting aspects of it.”
David: “We’re so obsessed over the minor details and everyone’s like, ‘I didn’t even hear that.’”
Felix: “No one’s going to give a shit if your kick’s 2dB too loud, you know what I mean?”
‘Come Around’ is a good example of the step forward in songwriting on ‘Growing Pains’. How has your songwriting grown and what do you think has informed it?
Antonia: “The biggest thing for me is I moved out by myself. So I was experiencing a lot of things for the first time that I haven’t experienced before or processed either. It’s also just me coming to terms with being more comfortable and confident with myself, and then being able to put the pen to the page and let it out a little bit.
“I think before, when we used to collaborate, it was always about being a bit ambiguous, which is fine and awesome, but we’re just comfortable being more ourselves and lifting the veil a little bit which gives it a bit more cohesion across the board.”
You all come from very different backgrounds. Did you iterate to find that GAUCI sound or did you come to the table with a similar mindset for ‘Come Around’ and the mixtape?
Felix: “I think there was a moment we chose. There are lots of songs that we didn’t use that don’t sound like this and there are some songs we adapted to sound like this. The song ‘Growing Up’ we had and, maybe, we had ‘Brat’, and the other ones we could have gone for a more electronic vibe, but we were like, ‘maybe if we try it like this? We want to give this a go.’
“I think we told our manager we want to basically make an indie record and she was like, ‘What the fuck?’”
Antonia: “I mean, we still had ‘Come Around’ at that point, but it wasn’t how it ended up.”
Felix: “That could have gone either way. I think that song could have really stayed electronic and synthy, but I think we made a conscious decision. We consciously wanted this record to sound cohesive and more alive and picked the songs that would work together.
“And I mean, also writing that song [‘Eat My Words’] with [DMA’S member Matt] Mason, I think helped to lead us into live instrumentation more and really make use of guitar properly.”
David: “We wrote so much more on the guitar of this record than we ever have.”
Felix: “Yeah. And then we were consciously like, yeah, we want to do this, we want this record to sound like that. Let’s not write a synth line over the guitar that we already all love, let’s bring that live nature out of it.”
In terms of building chemistry as a band, David and Antonia – as siblings, how has that process been? Is it different to working with friends or people you get to know through a band?
David: “I guess it’s really easy in that we usually can just say whatever we want to each other, which kind of makes it hard for Felix sometimes.”
Felix: “Sometimes, I have to be Mum.”
David: “It is easy because you can be incredibly honest. You don’t have to feel like any hangups. I mean, shit, we’ve known Felix for 10 years next year. We’re all family.”
‘Come Around’ has a very effective use of the word ‘fuck’, which is an underrated art.
Antonia: “The only thing I think about with swearing in our songs is my dad always being like, ‘you shouldn’t swear, ladies shouldn’t swear’. That’s all I think about.”
David: “I played it for him the other week, and he was like, ‘did she swear?’ They’re very strange. I love my parents but they don’t like swearing, even though they swear.”
Felix: “Sometimes you write it in because it’s just what comes, and then you go, ‘oh, maybe I’ll replace it.’ I think we had the thought, and then nothing was as good. Sometimes you can’t replace it. We had the thought, I think you always do.”
Antonia: “And I think maybe the place it’s coming from, it’s used in the way you would in real life so it feels…”
David: “It feels authentic. It doesn’t feel like a swear for the sake of it.”
GAUCI’s ‘Come Around’ is out now. Their mixtape ‘Growing Pains’ is out April 4
