"I've forgotten how taxing it can be. Yeah, I'm pretty unfit I think, I must not be eating right or something, 'cause I'm just exhausted,” laughs a relaxed-sounding Xavier Bacash, getting back into the promo swing of things for his band with friend Lionel Towers, Gypsy & The Cat. Inpress gets him on the very last interview of a full day, and while his voice sounds tired, he's pleasantly still up for it.

Such is life for the (still very young) Melbourne duo, who burst onto the scene in 2010 with soaring pop hit Jona Vark and have hardly looked back since. They're just about to embark on their first national tour in 2012, following a solid year of writing and recording which has now seen the release of the album they're taking around the country, The Late Blue. It follows 2010's Gilgamesh, containing popular tracks like the abovementioned Jona Vark, plus other favourites like The Piper's Song, Time To Wander and Running Romeo. The former three all scored a place in triple j's Hottest 100 poll.

As cliché as it is, the difficult second album situation couldn't be more applicable to these guys, having such lofty heights to try and live up to as they do. Bacash wasn't particularly worried though – to begin with. “Yeah well, initially I didn't [feel any pressure], I was like, 'this would be easy', but then as time started to go on it was like, 'We'll just do what we do', you know? We think people will like it, you know what I mean?” the singer and chief songwriter explains. “I mean, you sort of have that naïve feeling towards it, but during the process as time went on we started really experimenting more and more with sounds and our sound. We think it's progressed a hell of a lot, so things were getting a bit weird and then I started to feel maybe a bit of pressure in the sense of, if people can understand this.”

And at that point, Bacash came to the realisation that you just need to trust your fans to come with you, wherever the journey takes them. “I think we just hope we can keep the right portion of our fan base and build on that path,” he begins, before stating, “You know, I don't care. This is our music, you know? It's not really great when people only like one of your songs 'cause it's been on the radio. You really want fans to buy your records, not singles, that's why we make music.”

He needn't be too concerned. While The Late Blue does travel down a few different paths to its predecessor – namely a few psychedelic and experimental areas – there's still enough of the dreamy pop they've made a name for themselves with to keep most happy while themselves maturing. When it came to writing the record, Bacash found himself in a markedly different place to pre-Gilgamesh, that album's genesis owing a lot to his recent break-up with a girlfriend. This time around sees him getting (a little) older, and with a heap of new experiences brought about from the duo's newfound popularity.  “Yeah, well there's like a tiny bit of residual from that [break-up] still, but not much at all. It's sort of more of a coming of age record in the sense we were sort of 19, 20 [years old] writing Gilgamesh. Now I'm 24 and have travelled the world and met lots of different people and experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And so there was a lot to draw upon from all those experiences.”

Indeed, Bacash has matured plenty over the past few years. “I think the record reflects that as well, it's just more mature really. It feels a bit more… I don't know, it was more introspective or something, like thought out. Definitely all the production and songwriting is crafted a lot more than the first record. So it feels a lot richer, in that sense of an experience to me, when I listen to the songs now.”

As any proud father should do, Bacash wants to show of this richer work to the public, and fans will be getting the chance to hear a lot of the new record in the flesh on this upcoming tour. It's a challenge Bacash is looking forward to, with the duo planning to play basically all of The Late Blue, in its entirety. “So it will be all the new songs and a few of the older ones,” he announces. “At Splendour we played four new songs and now we'll play all of them. So we'll have to start rehearsing all the other ones. But we're pretty up to scratch with the first four,” he laughs, detailing how the set's going.

“Well, we know there's always going to be songs that we have to play by measure of their popularity. I think it's going to be, like we're going to have to play a lot of this new record, because it's our new record and we want to promote it and we really love it. So I think it will be more about playing literally every song besides The Valleys Of Kashmir, which is just an instrumental that goes for like a minute-forty, so we probably won't bother playing that. But we will play the other nine songs. So the set would go a bit longer this time. I think that's sort of cool when bands play shows on the night and they might chuck one [random old song] in. Instead of making a set list for the whole thing [we'll be] changing it up each night like, 'We'll play Human Desire tonight' but the next night we'll play Parallel Universe instead or something like that like that.

“We'll be playing Jona Vark obviously,” he adds with a wry chuckle. Bacash has enjoyed the chance to change some of the old faves around a little though, to try and get them in step with the new material, and in some cases add ideas that have only come up in retrospect. “We've made a few changes actually, on the old songs and how we play them, just to tie them into the other songs we play, you know, sonically. We kind of changed the structure up so it's a bit fresher. You essentially, after a while, give up: like, 'I wish I would have done this on this'.”

With a new album comes a whole new cycle of touring, interviews, travel and general life as an international music act, making our interview one of the last times Bacash gets to chill at home for a chat about all such things. This fact isn't lost on him. “Yeah, we'll probably be touring until the end of next year, I'd say,” he laughs, “and probably longer, so it's going to be the calm before the storm right now. Sitting on the couch having a phone interview is going to be something that won't happen for a long time, I'm sure.”

Gypsy & The Cat will be playing the following shows:

Friday 26 October - Palace Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 1 November - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Friday 2 November - Amplifier Bar, Perth WA
Thursday 8 November - Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
Saturday 10 November - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 March - Future Music Festival, Brisbane QLD
Sunday 3 March - Future Music Festival, Perth WA
Saturday 9 March - Future Music Festival, Sydney NSW
Sunday 10 March - Future Music Festival, Melbourne VIC
Monday 11 March - Future Music Festival, Adelaide SA