Third Time Luck

elen Croome might have imagined that the psychology degree she began was the appropriate career path, but soon accepted the inevitable when she realised she was spending far more time in her room working on her guitar playing and songwriting than she was on her studies. Opting for a musical career and taking up the stage name Gossling late in 2009, she released her debut EP, If You Can't Whistle, her distinctive vocals quickly capturing the attention of triple j and community radio – and the die was cast. A second EP, Until Then, won her more exposure, with singles, I Was Young and War, upped her tour profile and brought her to the attention of Melbourne hip hop artist 360, on whose track, Boys Like You, she featured and with whom she's since toured. She recently introduced her third EP, Intentional Love, with the single, Wild Love, which she co-wrote with Dann Hume, the drumming and producing brother in Evermore, also known for his work with Lisa Mitchell.

“We decided to do a couple of days of songwriting together and that was the track that came out from us hanging out together. It's a bit of a fun 'love' tune, but it is a bit of a dark love song and the film clip that we made for that kind of plays on that a little bit as well with the ending of the clip has a bit of a twist and you realise I'm not as lovely as I seem,” she admits with a chuckle. Let's just say there's a touch of the Monty Python “seducing milkmen” sketch in there.

Even before she began recording for Intentional Love, Croome knew it was going to be another EP rather than the album she's surely long overdue in releasing. “I knew right from the beginning because I'm an independent artist, so I have to consider quite a few things before I create anything and I wanted to get another EP because I hadn't had any music out for a while and it was just easier for me to do an EP and concentrate on an album after I release this EP.

“I actually had writer's block for about twelve to eighteen months before I wrote this EP, so I was struggling a bit and that's why I decided to do some collaborations, do some days writing with other people and see if that helped bring creativity back again, which it did. I used to be quite nervous sitting with other people sharing my music, but I seem to have gotten past that. I had some jamming days with other artists and I didn't write any songs with them that turned up on this EP, but it made me be able to go home and write the songs that are on this EP. So it kind of sparked writing again. Even if you're jamming with someone and you don't write anything on the day, for me it's still a win 'cause it's having a day of being creative and it might spark something later on.”

So for the moment at least, fans will have to content themselves with the four new songs Croome has added to her canon – Wild Love, Love Fall Foul (“which is a song I wrote about a friendship where one of the people in the friendship likes the other person a bit more than the other one does and they can't display that to them”), Rose (“a song about a stalker – it was a fun sort of a story that I made up”) and Heart Killer (“that's me again in sort of a fantasy world, playing out the life of someone that I wouldn't really do in real life”).

While she's overcome her bout of writer's block, songwriting is still something at which Croome has to work: “I don't think songs have ever flown freely really; I have to sit down and make a job of it, but I'm writing songs for the album as well as collaborating with other people on their stuff, so different genres as well. So I'm able to do a fair bit of writing at the moment, which is lovely, before I go touring again. It's hard to write on tour.”

Among those fellow artists with whom Croome would love to have a shot at co-writing are Matt Corby and Sia, but of course the unlikeliest collaboration has already happened with the aforementioned 360 aka Matt Colwell.

“They had this track for his album,” Croome explains, “and they were looking for a female vocalist and his record label had heard of me and they asked me to just come in and sing on the track – and it worked out pretty well,” Croome laughs. It's a bit of an understatement considering it peaked at #3 in the charts and has sold triple platinum. “Playing the shows and things are pretty interesting – it's a very different crowd at a 360 show compared to a Gossling gig. I played my own show at the Port Fairy Festival recently and that was the first festival since 360's track came out and I could tell that quite a large chunk of the audience were there because they'd heard me through this track. So I'm sort of starting to see some of the 360 fans come across into my own solo shows, which is quite interesting 'cause I wouldn't think that my music was appealing to a lot of that crowd, but I've been proven wrong.”

Croome is also getting exposure in another altogether different demographic courtesy her song Hazard, from the If You Can't Whistle EP, which had been included in an episode of the hit FX show, American Horror Story.

“Yeah, that's very exciting. I have a publisher in Australia called Native Tongue and they have partnership with the publisher in America who got the song placement and they've been looking for a TV show for me for a while. The opportunity came up where the scene the song is in relates heavily to my lyric of the verse of Hazard, so it fitted perfectly with the writing of the scene. I got to watch that episode where the song comes in and that's been amazing. I'd really love to get my music in more television and advertising, that sort of thing. That's something I'm interested in. I do a bit of composing as well.”