Gossling

Right now Helen Croome is on top of the world. She’s sitting in her hotel room in Galway, on the coastline of Ireland – fresh from a run of shows in the UK and Europe, radio stations across the globe are now playing her music and her name alone is drawing audiences in their droves. It’s rare downtime for the 31-year-old musician affectionately known as Gossling who has come a long way from playing acoustic folk songs in country Victoria. “I’ve been pinching myself thinking, ‘Wow, I’m on the other side of the world and there’s people coming to my shows and they have the record. I’m feeling very lucky and I’m having such a wonderful time.”

Harvest Of Gold, her debut album from November last year, has recently been given an international release and as such has seen her perform somewhat old songs to new people. “It’s lovely that the record gets more of a life and a bit more length to it. It’s fun to see what songs connect with people overseas as opposed to in Australia. My head’s in two worlds now because I’m still very much in this album but I have to start thinking about the next one and having more material coming out.”

In certain circles, Croome is best known for her collaboration with rapper 360 on his song Boys Like You, which peaked on the ARIA charts at number three and achieved quadruple platinum status. However, Croome admits that its success means little overseas. “It is nice because people don’t ask me to sing the song at a show,” she laughs. “It’s lovely that people are there purely because they’ve heard my songwriting and like it enough to come to a show.”

About to embark on a headline tour of Australia, Harvest Of Gold has been repackaged to include a bonus disk of covers and remixes. No stranger to performing a cover, having taken on Ou Est Le Swimming Pool’s Dance The Way I Feel for triple j’s Like A Version and Mark Ronson’s Somebody To Love Me for Rockwiz, this time it’s Vance Joy’s Riptide. “That song was recorded in London for my label in the UK. It was released online before I toured with him. So then I did the tour and was like, ‘I covered your song…’ I was a little bit embarrassed.”

"I did the tour and was like, ‘I covered your song…’"

With a Bachelor of Music, majoring in film composition under her belt and writing credits that include television commercials and soundtrack scores to iPad apps, Croome says new Gossling material is on its way, it’s only a matter of finding the time. “I’m not a hugely prolific writer so I don’t have a lot of material just lying around. I need to make the space for it and allocate the time to it. I’m hoping after the Australian tour we can get really stuck in to the new material.” As one tour ends and another begins, it won’t be long until the fruits of her labour once again come to harvest.