Why Josh Pyke Is Mixing It Up And Living On His Own Time

"You've just gotta mix it up a bit," Josh Pyke says. He sounds exactly as laidback as you'd expect him to be when talking about life post But For All These Shrinking Hearts. After a small run of sold out shows for people who pre-ordered the record, Pyke has otherwise contented himself popping up here and there to play gigs.

"I've done five albums, so I didn't want to just do the standard release the album, go on a national tour and try and do that tour in time for Christmas. We just wanted to keep 2015 kind of low-key, because we didn't know what was going to happen in terms of whether the album would get picked up by radio or do well... Any of that. And after five albums we really wanted to take a breath and see what would happen."

"There's a real element [of] smoke and mirrors in the Australian music industry."

What happened was the album became a hit with Pyke's fans, who are finally going to get to see the songs presented by a full band when Pyke plays a few festival slots ahead of a tour that he sounds genuinely excited about.

"We wanted to do a tour that wasn't just going to the same old venues again. And then we found the Twilight Series were on in Melbourne and at Taronga Zoo so it seemed like a perfect platform for the rest of the tour. So this way we could take in slightly different venues and we based the tour around those shows."

As for the decision to hold off on presenting But For All These Shrinking Hearts to the masses, Pyke is quick to thank his "small and supportive" fan base who have allowed him such freedom. It's that cadre of fans who have allowed Pyke to spend the last decade touring Australia and gaining more insight into the country's music business. Even if conventional wisdom says when your album comes out, you tour, Pyke thinks the conventional wisdom of the Australian music scene isn't something to set your watch to.

"There's a real element [of] smoke and mirrors in the Australian music industry. Probably in every music industry, but here it seems like people have a hit single and they go and do a big tour, but it's not as successful as you might think it was. It looks very successful, but everybody walks away having lost a lot of money. And I just don't want to engage in that stuff. I just want to play honest, organic shows. So you've gotta find that balance between your ambitions and being a bullshit artist basically. I am ambitious, and I will always be, but my ambition rests more around making better and better music, rather than getting bigger and bigger.

"I know what it takes to get a bigger profile. It takes, by fluke or good fortune, getting a big radio hit single — which I've never had — or just a long process of incremental increases in your fan base. So that's the road I seem to be travelling, and I don't want it to be any other way. I don't want to live in hope of something that I don't necessarily even want. When I started out, all I wanted was to do this as a job and live a quiet, creative life. And I constantly remind myself that that's what I have."