[Interview] JOSH PYKE

Gearing up for the release of his fourth studio album, The Beginning And The End Of Everything, on 5th July, and preparing for a tour in August, JOSH PYKE spoke to LOUISA BULLEY about fatherhood, his new home studio, and the big themes that made their way onto his upcoming album.

So you’ve had a bit of a change in how you recorded this album in that you’re now using a home studio. What kind of difference does that make to the way you record?
Well for me, mostly it’s just like an element of spontaneity, like an organic thing where you write the song, sign off on the lyrics, finish off the structure in your head and then record it straight away. So there’s a lot of creative instinct that goes into it, instead of getting to overthink it or anything. So I’ve got my stuff all set up so that I don’t have to do very much in terms of mic-ing things up or anything, it’s all ready to go. So it just allows me to keep the creative happening, basically.

So a bit more off-the-cuff, I guess?
Yeah exactly, and just experiment with things, and there’s no pressure, coz I’m not like looking at the clock and thinking about how I’m spending $500 a day in the studio. There was a demo that I did where I spent the whole day recording a song and at the end of it I was just like, “nah, this is rubbish”, and I could just scrap it and it didn’t matter, haha.

What are some of your influences, musically? I’d be interested to know what you were listening to growing up, and what you were listening to when you were writing and recording this album?
Well, growing up it was very diverse. As everyone does I started by going through my parent’s record collection which was mostly ’60s and ’70s stuff, you know, a lot of singer-songwriter stuff as well as a lot of Sabbath and Zeppelin and umm, Elton John and Billy Joel and stuff. And definitely Beatles and Beach Boys and stuff like that. So I think those seminal things have really, you know, stuck in there.

But then as a teenager I pretty much listened exclusively to metal, punk and metal. And you know, I’ve said this before but I definitely think that my biggest influence was Soundgarden because I learnt how to play guitar playing Soundgarden songs and Chris Cornell always tuned his guitar to Drop D. And so that’s how I learnt how to play guitar, playing in Drop D and I still to this day, I always play in Drop D. So like every song that I’ve ever written has been in Drop D, which is quite unusual, so yeah that has impacted a lot on my song-writing.

But then, for this album, I usually try and steer clear of being influenced too much by other stuff because I think it can just screw you a bit if you’re trying to sound too contemporary or too whatever. Having said that, I was listening to a lot of Deer Hunter and stuff like that, but yeah, I’m not sure that would’ve, apart from the demo sort of vibe, I’m not sure that it crept too much into the actual songs that I did.

You wrote the track ‘All The Very Best Of Us’ with Holly Throsby, who you’ve known since childhood. What was that experience like, collaborating with a musician who you’ve known for such a long time?
It was great, I mean, we’ve known each other for a long time just as buddies, but never really worked together. We did a Dylan tribute concert series together which was really great, and that was the first time that I’d worked with her musically. But we followed each other’s careers for years and in my family home we listen to her records all the time. So it was, I thought it would go well, but I didn’t know it would go as well as it did, and I think a lot of it was because knowing each other added an element of trust, and we already knew that we respected each other as people and stuff. And because I love her music I think I was a lot more open to her pushing me in directions I guess? So where I would normally fill in gaps in my songs with more words, she was like, ‘just leave that, you know, let that breathe there’ and when it came to recording her vocals I was trying to get her to push her voice a bit more, and I don’t think she would’ve done that except that we trusted each other, you know? So it was, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it was a lot more comfortable than I was expecting and I think that comes through in the song. Because it’s hard to write a song with somebody else where you end up feeling really connected to the song, but I think she really took a step over onto my side and tried to write, you know, tried to write from my perspective, and I think that’s a very generous thing for her to do.

It does come across in the song, I think you blend really well together.
Yeah, It was great. I’d love to do more stuff like that.

You’ve said that you wrote this album coming out of “the most intense years” of your life, do you mind talking about that a little bit? What are some of the things that have been happening for you in your life that influenced this album?
There’s a lot more to it, but I guess like just becoming a dad I guess. I mean, it’s one thing to just have a kid, but then to be an involved father through two and half years of also trying to work and have a relationship and all that, it’s just bloody difficult you know! And that’s not unique to being a musician, that’s just life.

And there were a lot of other things which I don’t really want to go into, but yeah that was the crux of it, just the changing period. And part of that challenge was finding time to work, and when you’re self-employed, whether you’re a musician or a plumber or something, you really have to motivate yourself to do work, to do your best work, because there’s definitely just a temptation to just rest on your laurels. I just really felt like I needed to push myself to do an album, to follow up with another album pretty quickly after the last one, because I felt creatively inspired and I felt like if I didn’t capture that moment it would pass, you know?

And I’ve always said that creativity begets creativity and so if you’re feeling creative you just kind of, the juices are flowing and you can keep going. So part of the challenge was just to have the time and the space in my domestic situation to get that happening, which was difficult but you know, it was a lot easier when we moved into our new place and I’ve got my studio now and I can disappear there, so that made it a lot easier.

I had a look at the ‘Bug Eyed Beauty’ video that the Sydney art duo Greedy Hen as a promo for this album, and it’s really beautiful.
It was, yeah. Those guys are amazing and I’ve worked with them quite a few times and again, it’s that level of trust where you inherently trust their sensibilities and what they do. So, you know, we knew we wanted an album teaser, and ‘Bug Eyed Beauty’ was perfect for that because it was the album opener and it’s short. And then I just gave the lyrics to them and just said, “do your thing.” So I really had very little to do with it, I’d seen another stop-animation thing that they’d done, so I knew the aesthetic that it was going to be, and they just nailed it, and it’s that trust that’s allowed me to get them to do all the album artwork and the lyric sheets and everything, and I just really had very little to do with it. For the first time ever, I’ve just kind of gone “this is what you do, this is what I do, you guys are great at that, this is kind of what I want, and now you guys turn that into something, you know, where your skills lie,” because my skills definitely don’t lie in graphic design and visual art, so they just, I’ve got a lot of trust in them.

Yeah I love the video, it looks really good and they complement each other really well I think.
Yeah, well I wanted it to be a true collaboration where I provide the music and then they interpret that into something beautiful and organic, and they really nailed it.

Even though you’ve spoken about this album having a lot of big themes, from the first track on this album, I feel like there has been a lift or something since Only Sparrows. I might be completely wrong…
I’ll let you know if you are, haha…

…but yeah, this album maybe seems slightly more hopeful or something than the last on the whole?
Yeah, it definitely is, it’s coming out of that period of change and, for me, doing the last record was really difficult and I really found it hard. I wanted to do things a certain way and we did that but I found it difficult, and you know, it was partly because you just cannot overstate how hard things are when you’re intensely sleep-deprived, haha, and that’s a common problem and I’m not being self-indulgent, it’s fine, I got through it and it’s not a big deal, haha. But umm, you know, you just have to readjust your attitude, and there’s so much joy in being a parent, there’s so much incredible intense joy, you know, there’s no other way to say it. And so I think this album kind of reflects that, whereas the last album was really reflecting on a lot of questioning and a lot of searching and a lot of fear. Fear, so much fear, you know, and this is just overcoming that and feeling joy, and there are still questions and still dark influences and stuff, but just feeling joyful again, which is great, it’s a great place to be.

I have a quote here from your media release for this album, “to eliminate desire, you either need to acquire everything you’ve ever wanted, and therefore desire nothing more, or you need to train your brain to desire only what you already have.” I think we’ve kind of already been talking about this in the last questions, but would you say this album is more about the former, or the latter and being content with what you have?
It’s definitely about being content, it’s about, you know, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in God and I consider myself to be pretty pragmatic and practical, but being an artist you have to defintely engage in some sort of creative realm where you engage in the spiritual side of the world or whatever. I try not to be like a wanker about it, but you can’t help but engage in that world, because most of the time as an artist you’re just sitting up in the clouds, thinking about, you know, how to interpret a situation in a poetic way, and you know, part of that whole process for me in song-writing has been figuring out my place in the world, and the way that I expunge all that stuff from my system is to write songs about it.

I think by nature I’m a fairly acquisitional person, I kind of go “oh I want that, I want that, I want that” and I don’t like that side of myself. And part of being a musician, so much of being a musician particularly early on, is that ego, you know. Like, if we’re all honest about it, I didn’t begin writing songs to help people or anything, I did it because it helped me and then the reason that I wanted to be successful is that I felt that my ego was telling me that my songs were good enough to do well. And then when you get a level of success and you realise that that’s not what it’s about, that it’s about presenting art in an honest way and living life in an honest and humble way, and that’s something that everybody figures out in their own way, it’s not unique to artists or anything.

But for me, the way that I’ve come to realise that is by writing songs and coming to terms with the competitive nature of the music industry, which I hate, but you have to engage with to be a professional musician. There’s all these sort of blacks and whites about what you do, and on one hand you just wanna write songs and play songs to people, and on the other hand you have to sort of sell yourself, and I hate that side of it, but it’s a necessary part of it. So, you know, part of writing songs is me dealing with all of that and that is part of, you know, rationalising and realising that what I have is amazing and I wouldn’t change it. And there are difficult things about it, but, my God, they are far less difficult than what other people have to deal with, and just basically manning up and going “stop whinging” and you know, do what you do, do what you love to do, and then enjoy it.

I think those things are very universal, even though they’re clearly very personal to you.
Yeah, that’s definitely a choice that I’ve made, or something that I’ve tried to do. Like, I think the best art for me is art that you can look at or listen to, read, and know that the person that’s made that art is probably thinking about something specific, but it feels like it’s written about you, you know? That’s what I try to do, I’m not sure that I get it right all of the time, but that’s defintely what I try to do.

And yeah, it doesn’t isolate anyone by doing that I think.
Exactly, yeah, I think universal themes, like my whole point is that what I go through as an artist, I don’t want to be a self-indulgent artist, who thinks that I’m the only one going through this, and the way that I get through that feeling is by writing songs that I feel like, you know, turn the specific into the universal, and that’s how I can kind of engage in these things being universal and not feel isolated about it.

You just reminded me of this episode of [the TV series] Treme where they’re talking about this great New Orleans song and trying to figure out why it’s so great, and she’s like, “it’s all about the flood in New Orleans, it’s all about Katrina”, and the guy she’s talking to is like, “nah it was written 30 years ago, that’s why it’s so great.”
Yeah totally! Like some people have come up to me and said about certain songs, like, “this song is about this.” Like, I remember with ‘Factory Fires’ from the last record, this girl came up to me, actually in Newcastle and said, “this song seems to be about the demise of the music scene in Newcastle,” and I was like, “wow, that’s really interesting because I don’t know anything about the demise of the music scene in Newcastle, haha,” it was inspired by a book I read about the demise of an industrial town in mid-west America, you know. But to her it was about the music scene in Newcastle, which is cool.

Yeah, and even just with you saying that, you’re from an atheist kind of standpoint, I think that there’s another level of universality even in that. Like, I’m a Christian and I still get so much out of your music, because that questioning or searching is universal, regardless of what you actually believe?
Yeah, and a beautiful thing about that, like, my uncle’s a minister and I’ve had loads of people come up to me and say that like ‘Memories and Dust’ is about believing in God, whereas for me that song is about questioning that, and I just think that, whether it’s about one thing or another, art should always make you think about things, and if it does that then I feel like I’ve done my job.

So you’ve kind of talked about how being a father has changed the way that you make music, is that going to have an impact on the way that you tour and things like that?
Well, it will to a degree. Back in the day I would tour for like six weeks at a time, you know, maybe go home once or twice during that time? Now it’s more like four nights away and then home, four nights away and then home. So yeah, it’s impacted it in that sense, but that’s happened with the last album as well. So I’m just kind of continuing that theme. But for me it’s great, because I absolutely love touring but it’s not where I want to be all of the time, and your whole purpose in life is trying to find balance, well my whole purpose in life is trying to find balance, haha, and I do love touring, but if I do too much of it then I start to resent it for taking me away from my family, so yeah.

The album is really fantastic, I really enjoyed it. Is there a track on there that you particularly enjoyed writing, or that you have a particular tie to?
Well, I can honestly say that it’s the first album that I have listened to a lot, and I never listen to my own records, and I love all my records, I’m very proud of them, but I just love listening to this one. I think that, like, ‘Leeward Side’ is one that just makes me feel a lot because it’s really personal, but I think ‘Order Has Abandoned Us’, like the way that we did this album was that we recorded a lot at home and then just built on it at John Castle’s studio, and that one was all recorded at home and then we added the horns and the drums at John’s studio. So it just was like this triumphant ending and when it all came together and I heard it I just had this amazing feeling of like, you know, this lift where it just exceeded my expectations. I’d already loved the song how it was and then it just lifted, so yeah, whenever I hear that last chorus there’s always just a bit of a fist-pump, you know, haha.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that you sample at the end of ‘Warm You In Winter’?
Oh cool, well I’m glad that somebody’s picked up on that! That was like um, the singing you mean, at the very end? Yeah, I was playing a gig at, I think I was in regional Ballarat I think? And the gig was at a venue that didn’t have a backstage room, so the proprietor took me down to this Irish pub around the corner that he owned, and the greenroom was there. So I was hanging out there before the show and in one of the upstairs rooms there was like this vocal group rehearsing and they were singing whatever the song is, I can’t even remember what the song is…

Yeah I couldn’t figure it out…
And I just stuck my phone out and recorded a bit of it because it just sounded so ghostly and cool coming down the hall of this old pub in Ballarat, you know, goldrush town, in a couple hundred year-old pub. And ‘Warm In Winter’ has a bit of that, like sometimes I joke around and sing it with an Irish accent because it just sounds like an old folk song, so it just kind of reminded me of that and I just put it at the end there and added some other stuff too. I just wanted to have something cool and ghostly at the end, haha. Yeah, I think there’s another at the end of ‘Order Has Abandoned Us’ of these amazing Chinese string and banjo players that I recorded in a New York subway, so I’ve got a lot of that stuff, like, there’s another that didn’t make the album of some horns that were playing under the Eiffel Tower and stuff, so I’m sure that’ll pop up somewhere.

So it seems like there was almost no break for you between finishing touring for Only Sparrows in December last year, to the release of this album. Were you writing a lot on tour?
Yeah, I always write a lot on tour which I think is fortunate because it always takes up a bulk of my time. I just find it’s a good time to write. So I had written most of the songs, and then I did something that I’d never done before which was, I had seven songs finished that I loved, and based on that I just felt creatively inspired and I thought having a deadline would work, I booked in with John for whenever it was, the beginning of March or whatever it was. So I basically gave myself January and February to write the rest of the album and finish all the tracks. And for whatever reason it worked! It definitely gave me a couple of sleepless nights, but it worked, and even up until the last minute I was writing songs. Like ‘Bug Eyed Beauty’ was written four days before I went to the studio, and I think when you give yourself a line, when you draw a line in the sand for yourself, you either step up or fail, and I fortunately was able to step up, haha.

Can we expect you to be heading back into touring again soon for this new album?
Yeah, well the announcement actually happened today, so I’ll be touring in August, playing the Small Ballroom in Newcastle, so it’s all kicking off then.

Do you enjoy touring?
Yeah, I love it. I heard umm, I think it was Tim Freedman refer to it as “enforced leisure time” and I think that’s true, and having kids now I think it’s even truer. You know, you go on tour and yes, you’re working hard and you’re playing shows, but it’s a lot of fun and you’re hanging out with your friends in the band and you’re playing to people who wanna be there and hear the songs. So there’s not much to dislike about it except being away from home.

How are you feeling about the release of this album? Are you becoming more confident with each release, as you let each album drop?
Umm, I’m honestly like, before the release of every album I just assume that it’s going to be received very poorly. I really love this album, I just love it, but I don’t think that that necessarily means it’s gonna go great, you know, and the thing that I’ve come to realise in regards to what we were talking about earlier, is that that’s not my job, I can’t control how well it’s gonna go. All I can control is that I’m really proud and in love with what I’ve created, and that it fulfils me, which is for better or worse a reasonably selfish thing, you know, haha, but it just happens that way. So every time a record goes well, which so far they have and I feel very blessed, but every time it does I feel like I’ve dodged another bullet. So I’m just looking to dodge another bullet, haha.

Josh Pype performs at The Small Ballroom, Islington, on Thursday August 22.