Rome

The title of Josh Pyke’s sixth studio album is inspired by the saying “all roads lead to Rome”—each route you take in life leads back to yourself, your choices, your responses. Produced by Pyke in his Sydney home studio and mixed by Tucker Martine (The Decemberists) in Portland, Rome comes off the back of Pyke’s two-year touring hiatus, during which he authored a children’s book and collaborated with kids’ entertainer Justine Clarke on another. Returning to his solo career with a fresh perspective opened his mind to experimentation (witness the off-kilter arrangement of “Doubting Thomas”), but Rome largely sticks to the musician’s strengths–moving acoustic folk-pop infused with a potent air of nostalgia. Pyke uses nature to represent the ways our experiences shape us as people on “I Thought We Were a River”; he ruminates on procrastination on “Don’t Let It Wait” and sings about his children—and the bittersweet understanding that one day they’ll be grown up—on “You’re My Colour.” His journey into his forties lends an air of experience and gravitas, captured beautifully in “Don’t Let It Wait”: “And there’ll come a time/When the hand holding mine/May become calloused/Or weathered and wise.”