Gypsies, Cats and Foals Fans

 Words By Alex Cybulska

They’ve had their hit “Jona Vark” played on Triple J, performed at Splendour, supported The Strokes and Foals and enjoyed critical acclaim world-wide. If you don’t know Gypsy and the Cat by now, prepare for a new minor obsession.

Lionel Towers, 25, and Xavier Bacash, 22, sit across from me, legs crossed, fresh faced and gorgeous. With their hessian bags sprawled on the table in front of them, lattes in hand, they tease each other and laugh at my abominable understanding of folk music.

The Melbourne boys, now based in London, met a few years ago at Boutique Nightclub where they were both DJs mixing French House music, but don’t worry they are pretty embarrassed about it…

XB: Alan Braxe, Sebastian, Lifelike, Fred Falke – They’re what drew us together. The bricks and mortar. And then we became friends and we just started writing really bad shitty French house music. Then it turned into song writing.
LT: We were getting bored with just doing dance structures…

Their music evolved to include soothing vocals placed on an uplifting techy beat reminiscent of hippie girls in cheesy video clips, running through fields on a hot summer’s day. They’ve been writing for only one year and already drawn comparisons to Empire of the Sun and Fleetwood Mac – not bad, Just don’t mention it to them.

LT: We wrote [“Jona Vark”] before Empire of the Sun came out!
XB: …and everyone references us to Empire of the Sun. Which we do not sound like Empire of the Sun! When you get the album, you’ll be like WHAT?!

Their upcoming album holds some massive expectations with the likes of producers David Fridmann (MGMT), Rich Costey (Rage against the Machine) and Cenzo Townshend (U2) collaborating on it.

XB: They were awesome! They took the album to the next level. It’s always weird having someone change your work…LT: But not with those characters. When you’re dealing with the best in the world you let them touch your work because it’s going to be good! haha. There’s lots of juxtapositions between lyrics and the instrumental and I guess balancing it out. If you write a sad lyric and have sad music it’s tragic.

That’s what makes their music attractive – in spite of the lyrics, it’s upbeat and fun.

XB: I think we’ll be [a commercial success]. I don’t mean that arrogantly but I don’t think we’ll be that niche, cool alternative act. We’ll be that pop act and we accept that. We want our songs to be on Gold in 10 years’ time.
LT: When we wrote our music we were like, “let’s write music that not just one demographic will like.” The good thing about bands like U2 and Coldplay is you get such a mixture of an audience, old, young. And we’d like that. Definitely.
XB: There’s some fucking good songs on that album… I can’t wait for everyone to hear it, I’m so pumped. You’ll love it! November, just after the Parklife tour, we’ll drop the bomb!

How was it touring with Foals, they did a DJ set at out party – it was really fun…
LT: Yeah, cool.
XB: Great guys don’t know about their crowd though. It’s a bit of a weird match up to be honest.
LT: They had an ultra-indie crowd especially in Melbourne and our music is probably a bit more pop-ier than that.
XB: We’re a bit boring for them.LT: The audience stood there and listened though but I don’t think they appreciated our sound as much as the Strokes crowd did. In Adelaide and Sydney it was really good.

Keep an eye on these boys. Gypsy and the Cat’s serene “futuresque vintage pop” music is coming to a festival or radio station near you and their songs are bloody catchy. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

 Catch them at Parklife Festival or HERE