Bec Sykes Leans Into Hope And Triumph For Debut Album, 'Pepperpot Magic'

When Naarm/Melbourne artist Bec Sykes made her official debut into the music scene back in 2020, the world was a very different place.

Issuing her single Edithvale in July of 2020 against the backdrop of COVID, music such as hers served as some well-deserved respite from the world around us. For Sykes, however, it was the result of plenty of hard work and respect earned from the industry.

Behind the scenes, she had managed to win Melbourne label Pieater’s Pie School competition the previous year, garnered mentorship from the label and respected artist Tom Iansek, of Big Scary fame. Soon after, she’d won the Josh Pyke Partnership, with Edithvale arriving alongside her win.

"Bec’s music is very different from [Julia Jacklin or Phoebe Bridgers], but I felt the same potential for a large and devoted audience to discover her voice and become fans for life,” Pyke said. “The imagery in the song was intimate and vast at the same time, cinematic and personal."

With such high praise coming as a result of a debut song, expectations would have been high for a follow-up, and sure enough, Sykes returned in 2021 with Getaway and again in 2022 with At Least.

But before all of that, her auspicious beginning was marked with plenty of anxiety and nervousness in regard to making a solid first impression. That, of course, was before considering the state of the world outside.

“I was actually deep in like one of the worst experiences of my anxiety,” Sykes remembers. “Then all this cool stuff was happening and I was just celebrating at home in my dressing gown. 

“But all that cool, amazing stuff happened, I was having a really bad anxiety episode, and I felt the pressure to kind of keep the momentum going, but I couldn't for reasons that were related to my mental health,” she adds. “I also couldn't because like we were literally in lockdown, so I couldn't really go on tour, and there are a bunch of really cool support slots that I got, but then they were cancelled.”

Ask anyone who struggled with mental health amidst lockdown and they’ll agree that the prospect of rushing your debut into the world is a double-edged sword in terms of anxiety and opportunity – especially when you consider that the release of one single usually results in expectations of a follow-up.

“I didn't have anything else recorded, that was the thing,” Sykes explains. “It would have been probably easier in a lot of ways if I had all this stuff recorded, but then I was stuck in indecision of, ‘Oh, are my other songs good enough to live up to this?’

“It took me a long time to sort of find my feet again with my relationship with music, I think, which is so silly in hindsight because it was one song.”

Following the release of her three singles between 2020 and 2022, Sykes took her leave to work on a full-length album, beginning work on what would become Pepperpot Magic in 2023 alongside Robert Muiños.

Though the process only began in earnest last year, it’s been a lengthy process that stretches back to the start of her musical journey.

“I was house sitting at my brother's place for about six months during lockdown, I had the house to myself and I could sort of make as much noise as I wanted,” she remembers. “A lot of the songs sort of started then, but sometimes I write an idea and then I'm going through my voice memos and I don't find it until maybe like a year or two later and that's when I finish it. So that was the case with a few of the songs on the album.”

Indeed, this is one of the beautiful aspects of Pepperpot Magic – the vulnerable songwriting that gives its listener a glimpse into Sykes’ world. The honesty, the personal, and the tender combine in equal measure to create something truly beautiful. While it might be a difficult craft for many songwriters to master, for Sykes, it’s business as usual on the songwriting front.

“I think it's just how I write; I'm a bit of an oversharer,” she explains. “I feel unsettled if I'm not completely honest. Sometimes I put my foot in things and I'll go and have dinner with my parents and I'll tell myself beforehand, ‘Don't say this thing’, and then I just blurt it out. 

“I feel like the same thing almost happens when I'm writing,” she adds. “I don't really get the catharsis from songwriting unless I'm hitting the nail on the head in terms of what I'm actually feeling. I think it kind of feels like I'm bullshitting if I'm not being vulnerable.”

When one listens to the album, it’s easy to see where the vulnerability comes into play. After all, by way of her immensely poetic and personal lyrics, Sykes finds herself reflecting on two major topics throughout the record, including leaving an unhealthy relationship and reflecting on her religious upbringing. The result is a feeling of reclaimed power that permeates the eleven songs.

While some aspects of this came by way of Sykes using music to deal with what she had lived through, others gave her a chance to explore these topics – including on album opener Marlene, which was penned about her father.

“I think I realised a few years ago that one of the reasons I never had a lot of goals for when I was an adult was directly related to thinking that I wasn't ever going to live to be an adult, because I thought the world was going to end,” she explains. “Which is a pretty big realisation to make, but it made me understand myself so much better. 

“It wasn't necessarily a conscious thing of trying to heal myself or whatever through the songs, I guess the way that song came about was very stream-of-consciousness; it was sort of just exploring that idea. I think it's more of a curiosity than anything else.

“When I have conversations with people that I meet, the way that we almost instantly understand each other is if we have the same sort of story of having a religious upbringing,” she adds. “But then kind of moving away from that, we have this sort of innate understanding of each other in a way.”

One of the most notable aspects of Sykes’ debut album is the triumphant nature that it takes on. It’s not a fist-in-the-air sense of the triumphant, but rather, one related to overcoming, hope, and good things to come. For Sykes, that wasn’t necessarily the intention, but one that came into focus once the album was written.

“After writing the songs, I've sort of looked at them in hindsight and realised that a lot of it is about overcoming different kinds of challenges,” she explains. “I think that's one of the reasons I'm proud of it is because despite my music seeming very down and melancholic, I can't write unless I have some sense of hope within myself. 

“It might not come across like that in the songs when people listen to them, because I think this album is quite dark in a lot of ways, but to me there's a sense of like hope,” she adds. 

“I can be kind of a timid person sometimes, but the album, to me, is kind of like a personal accomplishment, because it is so related to me personally overcoming anxiety, and even just the act of going in to record the songs.”

While Sykes’ album is so touching, vulnerable, and downright poetic from a lyrical point of view, she’ll also be the first to admit that lyrics are not her main focus. While it does raise the question of what this album could be if lyrics were more important to her, Sykes notes that melody is the prominent focus that she brings to a record. 

“More recently, I started to think more about what a good lyric is to me, and the things that resonate are phrases that are sensory, or specific images,” she explains. “It has taken many years of writing to get  to the point where my lyrics actually sound poetic, because for a long time they were terrible and very generic.

“I've always loved writing prose and I think I almost had to give myself permission to write more abstract lyrics, because of that part of me that feels unsettled if I'm honest. I felt if I was using too many metaphors it just felt like beating around the bush

“Once I gave myself permission to use more abstract ideas or whatever, I realised that I could actually capture the feeling probably better,” she adds. “That's what poetry is, I guess, but it just took me a while to get there.”

Abstract, visual lyricism is also present within the record as early as the title, which was inspired by a phrase from her older sister, and ultimately serves as a tie-in of the magic of art and music coming from the outer suburbs of Melbourne.

“I grew up in Boronia, which is in the outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne,” Sykes explains, “And this place where my sister worked – which we called the fairy shop when I was a kid – was called Pepperpot Magic. 

“She was telling me this story about her best friend going into labour, and I think my sister got a call at 4am,” she remembers. “She was really disoriented when she picked up the phone, and she was just like, ‘Good afternoon, Pepperpot Magic’.”

At the time that Sykes’ sister told this story, she couldn’t even remember the name of the store, but there was something about the way the words rolled off her sister’s tongue that resonated with her. While she liked the way it sounded, there was something about the silly nature of her sister’s anecdote and the meaning it inspired within her that saw the name adopted for the record.

“All of the songs were sort of written in the suburbs,” Sykes explains. “I lived in Croydon at the time a lot of the songs were written, my piano was at my sister's house in Bayswater, and I would go there during the day when she was at work to write songs.

“I think I've always had this kind of insecurity about being from the suburbs because there's not a lot of creativity, art, and that kind of thing out there,” she adds. “But I think naming this album after a fairy shop in Boronia is sort of my way of saying that you can make art and magic can come from the suburbs.”

For any artist, the release of a debut album is a major step in their musical career. For Sykes, it’s a huge milestone both creatively and personally. After all, it was just five years ago that her musical journey was beginning in earnest thanks to winning the Pie School competition. 

Reflecting on these past few years, Sykes notes that above all, her younger self would be excited to see where she is now.

“It's been a journey of even learning to sing and learning to use my voice in a way that I didn’t know about,” she explains. 

“The other day I was clearing out my old phone videos and stuff and I watched a couple of videos of me singing in the past. It's quite cringy to look back at myself, but it's also kind of cool to see that I've developed as a singer, and I also think that I have more confidence now than I did in the past.

“When I was at high school, none of my friends really knew I could sing because I was very shy and too scared to sing in front of anyone,” she recalls. “I think if me as a teenager could see what I'm doing now, that I'm about to release my first album, I think my past self would think that's pretty cool to say the least.”

Bec Sykes’ Pepperpot Magic is out now.