“Well I guess I started to feel limited by the loop setup,” she says on Pikelet’s transformation from solo outlet to consolidated band format. “I wanted to explore different song structure ideas, but I could never find a way to work that into a looper. But I still wanted to have lots of layers of sound and not strip it back too much. So I decided to get a band, then Shags [Chamberlain] and Matt [Cox] and Tarquin [Manek] were all people around me who I really admired, and luckily they all said yes.”
Now when Evelyn performs solo, as she is set to do after our interview, she does so under her own name – fully distinguishing from the Pikelet banner. “What I’m doing tonight are piano pieces. Pikelet is the direction I went with layering sound, where this is stripping it back and trying very, very loose song structures and the ebb and flow with time. They’re not really structured in the way that I play them, there’s a lot of freedom. That I just do under my own name.”
As for the genesis of Calluses, Evelyn reveals that the album has benefited from a relatively elongated gestation process. “It started not that long after Stems. It’s been a long project. Some of the songs were written in 2010. Combo was written then, or maybe even prior, when I was in New Zealand touring with Bachelorette. They’ve all developed over the years, then we played them live for about two years. It works well because you can try them out and see what works, what doesn’t, then in the recording studio you can refine them even more. Finally you have this totally different thing than what you started with.”
In terms of lyrical content, Evelyn brandishes a disarming wryness that often doesn’t reveal itself on first listen. “The lyrics are very much a trial and error process, and when I’m writing them I don’t really know what the intention is. They reveal a lot to me later on when I look back. They really uncovered a lot of anxiety in my life, and a lot of anger about gender roles, feeling stifled. All kinds of negative areas of my psyche that I wouldn’t really look at in a way that isn’t a bit comical – just because it’s easier,” she states. “With this solo piano stuff I tend to look at those feelings, but without words. Pikelet tends to be this analytical process.”
Throughout the course of Pikelet and extracurricular musical outlets, Evelyn has displayed proficiency in a multitude of instruments. “Definitely piano at the moment,” she says on her current favourite outlet. “But it changes all the time. I did have a long stint with drums, and I miss drumming at the moment. But there has been a project where the drumming I like has fitted, not since True Rad [True Radical Miracle] broke up. It was accordion for a while, but that thing caned my back so I had to do something else.”
It’s in the capacity as a drummer that Evelyn joined visionary Japanese outfit Boredoms when they performed their Boardrum 10/10/10 in Melbourne for a truly phenomenal show. “It was really good. I had mixed feelings about it at times. I really enjoyed it as an experience and I went into it thinking ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing’. I looked at the way [drummer] Matt Watson did the performance and he was kind of scientific about it and wrote down the charts, whereas I was wanting be ‘in the moment’. I kind of wish that I had been more officious. But I really fucking loved it,” she reminisces. “It was a life-changing experience; I don’t think I will ever do a gig like that again.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
