Opening On Third

ot that she's about to quit working with The Bamboos. After all, though she's been singing professionally since she was 15, it was hooking up with the Melbourne collective that put Kylie Auldist on the map, both in Australia and internationally. In fact, it's all down to that band's mastermind, guitarist Lance Ferguson, that Auldist has a solo career that sees her finally stepping out to launch her third album, Still Life, live.

“We've known each other a long time,” she explains, “but it wasn't until The Bamboos that we set out to write together. Actually, it was [UK label] Freestyle that said they wanted me to do an album and Lance said, 'Yes, let's do that,' and then we went overseas and [The Bamboos' UK label] Tru Thoughts decided to sign me up and do it themselves. But it was on the proviso that Lance helped me in producing all the stuff as I wouldn't be able to do it by myself.”

That was back in 2007, and the result was 2008 debut album, Just Say, followed in 2009 by Made Of Stone, and now Still Life, her first album to be released locally.

“I think this is a bit more of a grownup album,” Auldist admits. “When I did my first album, it was an introduction, so I basically told a lot of stories about myself, and the second one was, 'Well, what do you do now?' So we basically thought we don't want to reinvent the wheel, we just want to still keep it in the soul vein because we've had success with that. I mean, I like every style of music but obviously, you know, Tru Thoughts signed us up to do this soul stuff, which we've always done and that's what we're good at, but I've always wanted to do a disco track and Lance has very kind allowed me to do that,” she chuckles.

“We did start out saying we wanted to do less instrumentation so that we can play it live without a hundred people on stage, but that didn't happen, you can tell, because there are strings and horns [laughs]. But also when you get Ross Irwin [The Cat Empire] involved, he's put a great big veil of horns and strings across it and you can't say no to that.”

Auldist has already made tentative steps towards establishing herself as a separate entity live, touring Europe opening for The Bamboos this past year with a band called Cooking On 3 Burners. But she hasn't really done it as Kylie Auldist, back at home.

“This is my first foray out into the big wide world with a serious band. When I did my last launch I had strings and backing vocals, but this time I'm paring it back as much as I can. The Bamboos takes up a lot of my time, but I've three albums' worth of songs now – there's no excuse for me not to do live gigs.”

Joining Auldist and Ferguson in the band are keyboards and horn player Luke Saunders, saxophonist Damien Grant, trumpeter Stewart Kirwan, bass player Mick Meagher from The Putbacks and Bamboos drummer Graeme Pogson. Meanwhile, over in Europe…

“There's a big funk and soul scene over in England, and for some reason the French seem to like me, and Tru Thoughts have got an office in America as well, so they've been liking me on the radio there, and UK iTunes has had my face up on the big banner and all that, so that's pretty exciting,” she laughs. “My name's up in lights – in pixels!”