There’s a romantic attachment to the sea running through Josh Pyke’s sophomore record. His fascination with maritime lore can be traced back to his ancestors, who were all Navy men and whalers. Though he didn’t know it at the time, this interest started to seep into the songs for Chimney’s Afire, whose title comes from an old whaler’s cry, when Pyke, a voracious reader, started reading about maritime history.
First he devoured 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, before moving on to tomes on the explorer Majellan and the Dutch trading ship Batavia. The language and imagery from this world proved enchanting. “It seemed like a new vein to mine, all that language and metaphor,” he muses.
Not that Chimney’s Afire is a dry, academic exercise or some kind of concept record about ancient mariners, however, as Pyke’s songwriting remains very much autobiographical. “I just can’t make shit up,” he concedes. “It just doesn’t work for me, I have to write about whatever I’m thinking and feeling.”
Pyke’s autobiographical tendencies also see him return to the theme of childhood that made his breakthrough radio hit Middle of the Hill so affecting. “For whatever reason, I’m still pretty drawn to that time in my life as a way of explaining things that I’m going through now. You have a certain security and naiveté about the things you feel when you’re a kid…the thing I’ve always wanted to do in my life is get back to that sense of purity and clarity. I’m always kind of gauging my adult life against those emotions and trying to find a balance.” In this way, a song like The Summer, which sees him yearn for the simplicity of holidays in a beach town, is as much about his current mindset, and his future ambitions, as it is an exercise in nostalgia.
An unassuming, low-key character, who says he doesn’t go out much and is content at home doing the washing up and listening to records (current favourites include The National, Fleet Foxes and, surprisingly enough, Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction ), Pyke recorded much of the album locally, in Sydney’s inner West. He chose Linear Recordings for their range of gear and because he wanted a predominantly analogue studio, where he could lay down the songs on tape before dubbing them into Pro Tools for editing.
Pyke also assumed much greater production responsibilities this time around, this being his first attempt at producing a whole album. “It was a really, really steep learning curve. There were definitely some moments at the beginning where I worried I’d bitten off more than I could chew, but by the end of it I felt pretty comfortable wearing the producer’s hat.” This growing comfort was helped by having experienced producer Wayne Connolly co-produce a couple of songs, and Pyke credits the ARIA winner with teaching him almost everything he knows about production.
After five months off the live circuit, Pyke recently completed a short tour. He was relieved to find audiences still interested (in fact every show sold out) and the response to new songs, like current single The Lighthouse was especially satisfying. This song was written while on a previous tour, and Pyke vividly recalls the locations that influenced the writing of it, including a lighthouse in Western Australia, streets in New York he tracked down after seeing them referenced in a Jim Carroll poem and various art galleries he visited along the way.
“Going to these places, whilst also being on tour, they just seeped in [to the songwriting] as a way of explaining what I was doing,” he tells me. “There’s always a process for me of patching up things I’m feeling passionate about.” The age of discovery he is so fascinated by may have long receded into the past, but for this ever-reflective songwriter, inspiration is still abundant, just waiting to be found.
Chimney’s Afire is released October 4 through Ivy League.
