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NAUT’s Gavin Laubscher: The 10 songs that changed my life
NAUT singer Gavin Laubscher tells all about starting on goth’s dark path, trying to sing like Jim Morrison, and why he hates The Police…
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NAUT: “You need to savour each moment intensely for what it is, then move on and do the same for the next”
With long-awaited debut album Hunt, Bristol post-punk quartet NAUT confirmed themselves as moody masters in a new wave of goth-inflected heavy music. As vocalist Gavin Laubscher and guitarist Jack Welch explain, however, it’s only through darkness that we can find the light…
- Words:
- Sam Law
- Photo:
- Vivien Varga
Life is defined by the pendulum’s swing. Be it the routine shifts between mundanity and excitement, the interminable lurching from triumph into tragedy, or the metronomic heartbeats of our days and nights, it’s this energy and duality that drives Bristol post-punks NAUT.
“Music is inextricably linked to the time – the zeitgeist – in which it’s made,” frontman Gavin Laubscher explains of how that eternal undulation has dragged goth-rock from the shadows, harking to the genre’s ’80s heyday in a way that also feels contemporary. “There’s recession. There’s grinding politics. We’re the closest we’ve been to nuclear Armageddon since the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you look at the world now, this current wave is born of a similar mindset to the first.”
Where contemporaries like Grave Pleasures and Zetra steer into dusky mystique, and Tribulation and Unto Others aim for metallic high-drama, NAUT imbue the dark swagger of Sisters Of Mercy and Fields Of The Nephilim with the older-school stomp of The Doors and Motörhead as well as the steely industrial edge of Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb.
While their identity as a ‘drum machine band’ is partially a matter of that ’80s revivalism, remembering when pre-programmed percussion felt like a futuristic innovation, it can also be seen as a comment on the infiltration of technology into our modern everyday. “I like the combination of man and machine,” guitarist Jack Welch grins, “building something organic around something inorganic.”
Rather than luxuriating in murk and metallic heft, though, February’s long-overdue debut LP Hunt is an exercise in acknowledging that good times cannot exist without the counterpoint of the bad.
“There are a few meanings to Hunt,” nods Gavin. “We’re hunting for opportunities, for meaning, for the next thing. It alludes to the Wild Hunt as an omen of bad times, which fits with how we wrote up to COVID, then how we’ve watched the world on a downward trajectory since. But it’s also about hunting for the end of those bad times, as well as sifting through the things inside you to draw out the authentic subconscious inner you: the quarry at the end of the chase.”
As NAUT’s cult grows, they look to great Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ words on life’s ebb and flow.
“To burn brightly, you’ve got to admit the full spectrum of colour,” Gavin explains. “You can do the same thing twice but even the ‘same’ action is never the same action. You record a song, but it’s never the same song you wrote or the same song you’ll play live. You need to savour each moment intensely for what it is, then move on and do the same for the next.”
“It’s all about continuing to push it,” Jack concludes. “As long as life keeps affording us these opportunities, that’s all we want to do.”
Hunt is out now via Season Of Mist. The band play ArcTanGent on August 16. This article originally appeared in the spring issue of the magazine.
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