Josh Pyke + Emma Pollock (The Delgados)
It didn’t take long before Josh’s unique voice and song writing style, influenced by the likes of Elliott Smith, Evan Dando, and Sparklehorse, began to find favour amongst music tastemakers, critics and Triple J listeners. The first taste, the assured ‘Kids Don’t Sell Their Hopes So Fast’, found high rotation on Triple J and soon ‘Silver’ and the gently sweeping ‘Doldrums’ followed to similar praise and airplay. These tracks are now available on the CD ‘Recordings 2003-2005’ through The Million records.
Josh signed to Ivy League Records and shortly afterwards travelled to New York for some further writing, performing and demoing and upon return set about recording what was his debut release under his own name, a mini album entitled “Feeding The Wolves”.
It’s Josh’s lyrics that draw this collection of songs together into a complete package. He cleverly dissects human emotion and feelings and shows them for what they are: complex, abstract, fascinating.
The words seem to tumble out of him: honest, evocative, and emotional all at once. The playing – again mostly all Josh – is one moment sweetly melodic, then turning urgent and insistent as needs be. This range of feelings, packaged so they bounce around inside your head like good songs do, and given so generously, go together to make “Feeding The Wolves” the sound of an artist beginning to realise an enormous potential.
Also on the bill is Emma Pollock. Former Delgados member. Signed to 4AD Records as a solo artist in June 2005 after having major panic attack about what to do after band split. It was either that or bugger off out of the music industry altogether and go and find work that I would probably walk out of within a month.
Considered putting out an album on Chemikal Underground for about 5mins and then figured out that asking my freshly ex-band mates to put out my solo record may be a little odd for us all so I then went to look elsewhere and as Delgados had a history with the Beggars Group of labels (Mantra put out our albums outside the UK) I ended up with a deal with 4AD, on which my first album ‘Watch The Fireworks’ was released in September 2007.
Funny how things roll back around however, as my new album, ‘The Law of Large Numbers’, will be released on Chemikal Underground on March 1st 2010. It’s nice to be back in the fold.
