With a debut EP about to drop and gig offers rolling in, life is good for Newcastle four-piece Camino Gold.
The genre-bending indie-pop surf rockers will release their self-titled debut - and new single Moving Out - at King Street Newcastle on Friday, July 12, before hitting the road for gigs in Sydney and Queensland.
Camino Gold's laid-back sound has drawn comparisons with Sticky Fingers, The Strokes, Gang of Youths and Ocean Alley.
"The plan is to keep playing shows, and we're writing songs at the moment for another EP or an album, we're not sure which one it will be just yet," singer-songwriter Claude Bailey tells Weekender.
"Continuously writing and playing shows is where it's going at the moment. It's pretty cool, I'm loving it."
The EP was produced and recorded by Steve Balbi (Noiseworks, Mi-Sex, Electric Hippies) with whom Bailey, Marcus Velarde (guitar), James Bowman (drums) and Jordan Banning (bass) have formed a strong bond.
"Working with Steve, I feel like this is a new level of music for us," Bailey says.
"He's got a lot of knowledge and he really works well with us; the dynamic is really natural and we just click with him. You can tell from the quality of the songs and the sounds that he has pulled out of us."
Bailey wrote Moving Out about moving into his first share house.
"I was in a shitty mindset. Smoking weed too much and doing nothing," he says.
"I spent a lot of time in the shed with the boys, watching TV, and it was stopping me from socialising and getting on with life.
"Going to the pub too much and making a mess of my life, really, and finally realising that life was getting me nowhere, that I had to work to better myself and my attitude."
If Balbi provided a welcome shift in momentum for the band in terms of lyrical development and fine-tuning their sound, so too did the arrival of bass player Banning.
"We've been writing a lot since he joined the band," Bailey says.
"I tend to write a sad song here and there but there's some stuff coming that's a bit more fun and a bit more dance-y, I'm not quite sure how else to describe it.
"You can hear the difference between the songs we're writing now and the EP we've just released, you can tell the different stages, or eras, that we're going through as a band."
Playing more and more gigs has made the band hungrier for success.
"There are so many bands playing local shows, I know, but we've all put our heads down and said 'Right, this is what we want to do. We're giving it a red hot crack'," Bailey explains.
"We're meeting other bands, putting ourselves out there."
Camino Gold played a show in Wollongong last Sunday which surprised Bailey.
"The crowd was bloody awesome, singing along. It was a bit overwhelming to me because I thought 'Oh it's just a Sunday gig, people have to get ready for work the next day', but people turned up," he says.
"The team behind Yours and Owls Festival have been organising shows for us down Wollongong way, so we've got a foot in the door there and we're constantly hitting them up.
"We're also hitting up triple j for festivals, if they're going to have them again. We are jumping on anything we can, especially over summer."
Until then, Camino Gold will keep writing songs and making connections with fans and industry types alike.
"It's five years since Marcus and I played our first gig together in a little cafe in Singo," Bailey says.
"We released four songs over a one-and-a-half, two-year period and we had big break and now we're coming back, guns blazing."
