Josh Pyke is wary of admitting that his fifth record is his best yet.
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"I think it is [my best], but it sounds arrogant when the person that made the album says that, so I'm always cautious about it," the Sydney songwriter says.
"But every album that I've done I thought was better than the one prior, and that has been my aim.
"I don't want to put something out that I don't stand by 100 per cent and don't feel is my best work."
Pyke has built a loyal, organic following since his 2005 breakthrough single Middle of the Hill, carving a songbook rich in melody and lush textures, tied together with thought-provoking lyrics and literary metaphors.
His fifth album, But For All These Shrinking Hearts, is now different, and adds an even broader array of folk influences and studio techniques to his impressive canon.
"It's been by far the most immediately positive response that I've ever had [to a record]," Pyke says.
"Other albums have been slow burners and people love them, but it's taken time for them to build.
"But the response to this one has been nuts."
"For me, writing has been the one real way I know to work the demons out of my system..."
- JOSH PYKE
The prolific songwriter did not intend for his new record to be more immediately catchy than previous releases.
"From the very beginning of my career I decided that I would never write with an agenda," he says.
"I just wrote songs [for this record], when I had 20 songs I thought it was time to make an album."
Pyke is happy for his fans and the media to make up their own minds as to whether But For All These Shrinking Hearts is his strongest release because, despite public scrutiny, he remains his harshest critic.
The songs that make it on to an album have survived the 37-year-old's stringent culling process.
"I cull very early and I'm quite harsh with my culling," he explains.
"My barometer for whether or not I think a song is good is basically just if I complete it.
"Then I know my instincts are telling me it was worth completing."
Pyke's songwriting does not stop when it is time to tour.
When a new record comes out, the Sydney native already has a collection of songs together for the following release.
"I just write all the time, I was writing on the road for this album," he recalls.
"I remember exactly where I wrote a lot of the songs - for Late Night Driving I was in Toowoomba, of all places, playing in a church there.
"Then I come back [from tour] to my home studio and refine my ideas there."
The starting point for this new collection of songs was the album's opener, Book of Revelations, which set a direction for the songs that followed.
"That's why it's the first track on the album," Pyke says.
"It's the first song where I've played drums all the way through on it.
"It has a cool, slacker vibe to it, like Wilco or Pavement, and I was enamoured with that tone.
"I feel like the rest of the album has a similar tone, at least in the production - it's more dense, and layered and there's more textures in there."
While Pyke's recording and touring schedule seems like one long seamless cycle, the songwriter concedes that he sometimes endures a creative dry spell.
But he always manages to find a way out.
"It has been an album every two years, but within those two-year periods there will be months and months where I don't write anything and won't feel creatively inspired at all," he says.
"I've just learned to weather those periods and have faith that they'll end.
"Having a space to work in means that even in those periods where I'm not feeling massively inspired, I can keep doing stuff anyway.
"I'll write some prose or a story and slowly things start to happen again."
And when the muse does return, Pyke finds the songwriting process extremely cathartic.
"For me, writing has been the one real way I know to work the demons out of my system," he explains.
"The things I need to process as a person, to remain a fairly well-balanced person, happens through songwriting.
"If it wasn't my job I would be doing it anyway.
"I feel incredibly lucky that it has become my career, but the primary reason that I wrote songs in the beginning was just to get things out of my system."
Hunter fans can get their Pyke fix when the musician performs at Maitland Gaol next month to headline the intimate Elsewhere event, alongside The Basics, Thelma Plum and many more artists.
Pyke has previously performed at the historical venue for a Bitter and Twisted international beer festival.
"It was awesome, really cool, so I'm looking forward to [Elsewhere]."
Elsewhere is on Saturday, October 10 at Maitland Gaol.
Head to Oztix.com.au for tickets.
Grab Thursday's Maitland Mercury to win tickets to Elsewhere.