The Best Of Josh Pyke + B-Sides & Rarities
2017
'Memories & Dust’ was the first song I learned to play on guitar. I was given a capo for my sixteenth birthday and from then on I thought I’d made it as a guitarist. It was the first song I ever sang in front of a friend; we were sat in adjacent studios in our high school music room, separated by a wall and a single layer of noise-canceling foam. It was the song that soundtracked my favourite memories and the song that got me through tremendous grief.
It was also the title track of Josh Pyke’s debut album which came out in 2007.
It actually wasn’t until a few years later that I found out Pyke had once lived in the house opposite my own, and worked in the record shop in the middle of Darling street.
There’s this quote about music journalism that I find really quite intriguing, it states that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". Whilst I might not agree entirely with its absolutism, there is something to question here. Music is so readily available to us now; it seems as if the role of the music critic is outdated. The music journalist? Perhaps even more so. It seems that the role of the music journalist is no longer [or should no longer be] to mould the reception of music, or to violently pull it apart, nor to report on its being; rather as an outlet for personal thought.
Guilty of over-analysing, I’ve decided to take a step away from the 'critique’ which really only serves my own enjoyment, and has no impact on those that may read it.
However, we as humans, love stories — and if not for stories, perhaps music would serve no purpose either.
So instead, I’m going to tell you a story.
Memories and Dust came out in 2007 when I was eight years old. Now, ten years later Pyke has collated 10 years of work (spanning 6 albums and 5 EPs) in an ultimate celebration of a career that is seemingly timeless in its legacy and constant in its impact. And what do we get? Not only a Best Of album, but a B-sides & Rarities LP.
I grew up alongside Pyke’s career. The imagery of fledgeling birds and childhood streets were the musical backbone I had in going to new schools and finding my feet in a new town. From there it was the themes on Chimney’s Afire of carefree summers and ferociously cold winters, both shrouded in this acoustic dialect and Aussie twang. In 2011 with Only Sparrows, Pyke’s buttery vocal tone and simple balladry shines through a new wave of melancholia, whereby each chord change is like a punch to the gut, with lyrics that tell a narrative fluctuating between hope and anxiety. Toward the Dylan-esque poetry of The Beginning and The End of Everything in 2013, and the vivid storytelling on 2015 released But For All These Shrinking Hearts, Pyke has embedded himself within Australian folk culture as a narrator of the everyday.
And a spectacular one at that.
It is therefore no surprise that the Best Of album follows in a similar vein, checkpointing singles and the substance of each of these albums in chronological order, making not only for a depiction of Pyke’s own musical journey, but reminding me of where I was when I heard these tracks for the first time.
Perhaps inherent to folk music, but I often think of Pyke’s discography as a time machine. The recurring motif of which he speaks to in his work is growth. This lends to this idea that as we continue to grow up, we can identify more and more with what he is saying.
The B-Sides & Rarities however, opens up for a whole new experience.
Through steel sting guitars, harmonicas, string quartets and warm vocal harmonies, Pyke is able to reckon with the gauntlet of time that runs deeper than a lyrical narrative alone. He creates the landscapes of sound that are so incredibly familiar; laden with crows, gardens and Sydney laneways, these narratives act as a window to the anxious psyche of a person who acknowledges the changes which happen around them.
Even more so on the B-sides, these are the tracks that never made it onto albums, but were still treated with the same studio respect. These are the tracks that although complete, were cut from set-lists and thus never made it to the forefront of our mind’s eye. Until now.
There are three tracks in particular I want to touch on; 'Confessions For You', 'Coles Lane Crossing', and 'Music From Another Room'. These are my favourites. Why? Aside from my own connections to these tracks, they best account for what to expect of this LP; from more alternative folk, to traditional balladry, to more experimental acoustic structures. This linear exploration of differing sonic pallets is one to note, we are again faced with these ideas of growth, both in a temporal and creative sense.
Finding magic in the mundane is what Pyke does, often times through the delicately assembled finger style guitar lines, and always within his lyrics. Balanced somewhere between simple description and convoluted metaphor, 'Confessions For You' extends this literary spectrum to a musical one. Yes, the track is driven by a picked guitar line, but it exists as an arpeggio which follows a melodic contour usually attributed to a Bach suite. Pretty incredible coming from someone who doesn’t read or write classical notation. There’s a soft piano accompaniment here, paired with bird sounds and the classic Pyke vocal — doubled and panned hard. This song sounds like nighttime.
'Coles Lane Crossing', a traditional ballad, is delicately mixed. There’s this staggered entry, as the story develops, its musical texture widens. There are two acoustic guitar lines here, conversing with each other as Pyke’s voice drenches the ear, warm in timbre and brimful of nostalgia and longing.
'Music From Another Room' is perhaps the greatest unfurling of sound within Pyke’s entire discography. Structured around a minor guitar progression, hauntingly slow vibrato and mournfully descending cello lines, the following phrase is transported from a traditional binary structure, toward an all-encompassing wall of music.
"I’ve seen the body breathing and I’ve seen the body breathe no more"
What comes from this transition is a 6-part vocal harmony which seems to conjure a sort of breathlessness or release, in that whatever pain the first half of the track summoned, is somehow soothed in the beauty of the remaining coda.
Josh Pyke’s music is a conduit for understanding where you are in the world. The intimacy of his instrumentation and caveats within his lyrics are what ties his listeners to reality. His music isn’t really an escape, but a comfort.
Now is the time to introduce yourself to Josh Pyke, if you haven’t already done so.
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