It’s been a mere ten years since the release of Josh Pyke’s debut album, but he already seems like a veteran of Australian songwriting. Since that formidable 2007 LP, Memories & Dust, Pyke has released a further five studio albums, and with several EPs thrown in, his discography amounts to around 150 songs – not to mention his collaborations with the likes of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Shane Nicholson.
“I’ve had a pretty good time,” Pyke chuckles. “It just felt like a good time to consolidate what I’ve done so I can put it in a period of my life and start again, move on to the next period.”
The timely release of Pyke’s Best Of, B-Sides & Rarities offers not only a reflection of the Sydneysider’s music but an opportunity to look back over his life up to this point. “It’s a pretty nostalgic thing to look back on songs from particular periods of your life,” he says. “Particularly the way I write songs, which is pretty much kind of to just delve into my own personal life and what’s going on.
“The biggest part for me, though, was going back into all the B-sides and rarities which are included in this release – those ones never made albums or stuff like that, but I’ve always loved those songs. So in a way it’s almost like an album of new material, but it’s just stuff I wrote 12 years ago. It was really great to look at them and think about what they were all about.”
Nostalgia was just one emotion among many Pyke experienced as he compiled this volume. But while some artists might look back on their earliest songs and cringe, Pyke was more than happy to revisit a 2004 composition, ‘Note To Self’.
“There’s no embarrassment – I don’t wish I had done anything differently,” he says. “I’ve tried very hard over the years to stand by all my creative decisions, and whether or not I would write another song like I wrote ten years ago is another question. They’re kind of like children, you know? You do your best, but beyond that, you can’t be embarrassed. You kind of have to let them live their lives!”
If not embarrassment, Pyke does admit to having been reacquainted with one old feeling: frustration. Especially when it came to his earliest songs. “At the time I wrote them I was working four jobs, trying to make money to keep doing music, keep doing little tours up and down the coast, and a lot of the songs, kind of thematically, were reflecting that frustration of not quite being where I wanted to be in my life, personally and musically.
“There’s themes of that kind of frustration all the way through my career, because I don’t feel like you kind of… every time you get where you want to go, you kind of decided there’s a new place you want to go, and for me, that was a battle.”
It’s a pretty nostalgic thing to look back on songs from particular periods of your life.
If Pyke’s songs are like his children, then it’s no surprise he feels they’ve grown into more than he ever anticipated when they were originally released.
“Just the other day somebody posted on my Facebook page photos of their wedding with quotes of two different songs of mine, and you know, people have tattoos of my lyrics – things like that.
“I never had expectations, I just wanted it to become my job. I never really understood how far songs could travel. That some of my songs have become part of experiences in [people’s] lives is a massive thing and something I don’t take for granted, but it’s certainly not something I expected when I started out.”
Despite the accomplishments of his last ten years, and having reached so many listeners on a personal level, Pyke certainly isn’t ready to hang up his coat just yet.
“Creatively I really want to branch out,” he says. “I’d love to get more into doing music for TV and films – I did a few songs for a show this year, but I’ve also really been enjoying writing prose. I’ve always written songs and I’ve kind of learnt how to refine a story back into three minutes, but I’d love to explore writing a book or something.
“There’s a lot of things I want to do in future but at the end of the day, I’m still every day compelled to come down and write songs – it’s not something I feel like I want to move on from yet either.”
Josh Pyke’s Best Of, B-Sides & Rarities is out Friday June 30 through Ivy League. Pyke plays the Enmore Theatre on Friday July 28.
