Gold Class Had An Album Ready Before A&R Came Knocking

Melbourne four-piece Gold Class sound at first like they've engaged in some serious musical time travel. From the opening track on their debut alum It's You, the listener is taken back to 1980s England via The Smiths, but this isn't a tribute. There's the sonic echoey-ness and retrospection of the poms, but theirs is a distinctly new approach in terms of lyrics and themes.

"I've always had something of Morrissey's sound in my voice," vocalist Adam Curley explains, "but what can you say to those comparisons other than it's very flattering, but not something we were necessarily ever aiming for. We never really talked about any particular band or any particular influence when we started jamming together." 

"What can you say to those comparisons other than it's very flattering?"

The band met while some members were studying creating writing, others had various bar jobs and all seemed to have mutual mates. This roundaboutness meant "already knowing each other's sensibilities" when it came time to start making music together and that coherence shows in the recording. Put together before there was a record deal or representation set in stone, the album shows the band's energy as they are now, rather than releasing an overly polished sequence of preview EPs and nervous toe dips before releasing The Big Debut.

"That was absolutely the idea", Curley says of the band's approach. "We recorded the album on our own before anyone else was involved, and I don't think we were ever going to be the type of band that would sit on material or release a series of previews. The whole idea was that we wrote a bunch of songs and we wanted to get them down and get them out however we could, and if a label hadn't have gotten on board then we would have found another way of doing that. But it turned out that Spunk had an A&R person who'd been coming to our shows and really liked us, so they got in touch with us and wanted the album as soon as it was recorded, and they were excited from the start. So then it was a process of getting all the artwork together and turning it around really fast, because they were keen to get going. And we hadn't even thought about that stuff, we'd just been making the music."

In addition to local interest from Spunk, Gold Class have also gained American representation and are looking to start showing off their wares beyond Australia. Again, it's the album and great tunes that are getting them noticed. "That's the other side of making an album straight way," Curley explains, "the album is a means to continuing to build on more shows and more audiences."

It's You certainly benefits from having been made by a young band working toward establishing their own sound rather than aiming to manipulate or play to a particular part of the business. Various exchanges about creative writing projects helped, too. "Evan [James Purdey, guitar] and I used to do a lot of writing and send each other stories that we were working on as part of a course we were doing... and that built a good process of working with a group and negotiating with what works and what doesn't."