Pikelet on Myspace

MP3: Bug In Mouth

Video: Miss Her

Video: Bug In Mouth

Upcoming Pikelet shows:

MELBOURNE: Fri Aug 22 @ Winter Tones, Roxanne Parlour
MELBOURNE: Fri Sep 5 @ The Tote w/- Charge Group + The Twerps + Extreme Wheeze
SYDNEY: Sat Sep 13 @ The Hopetoun w/- Kes
NEWCASTLE: Sat Oct 4 @ Sound Summit
SYDNEY: Sun Oct 5 @ The Great Escape

* BREAKING NEWS * Pikelet will perform at the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival with two special shows in the Spiegeltent on Wed 15 & Thu 16 Oct at 7pm. Offering up a delicious mixture of musical styles from past and present, Pikelet’s Festival debut will combine traditional acoustic instruments with digital effects, synthesisers and live looping. Tickets on sale now from Ticketmaster.

Pikelet is Evelyn Morris, a musical whiz from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, who began performing as a hardcore-obsessed percussionist and still currently serves on sticks in such heavy-hitting Melbourne institutions as Baseball and True Radical Miracle.

Evelyn completely changed gears a couple of years ago when something tickled her brain in a funny way and she felt compelled to grab an old accordion and launch a decidedly un-hardcore solo career.

Mixing musical styles from past and present, Pikelet’s live show combines traditional acoustic instruments with digital effects, synthesisers and live looping. Pikelet approaches harmony and melody refreshingly and idiosyncratically. While maintaining elements of traditional folk melodies and pop harmonies, Evelyn incorporates electronic technology and is able to produce a potent and beautiful sound entirely engineered by herself.

Pikelet’s self-titled debut album was released on Chapter Music in 2007 and has been an bona fide indie hit, much loved for its gorgeous, multi-tiered songs of swirling and shifting melody, layered harmonies and charming story-telling, engineered and produced by US uber-producer Casey Rice (Tortoise, Sea & Cake, Ben Lee and countless others).

Evelyn has been busy this year touring the world, playing solo shows in Europe and the UK as well as drumming internationally for Darren Hanlon and Baseball. In Australia she has recently supported the likes of Kimya Dawson, the Blow, Sufjan Stevens, Angus and Julia Stone, Beirut, Ned Collette and Love Of Diagrams.

PIKELET PRAISE

“Morris employs a range of instruments (including piano accordion!) and loops so extensive they’d make an audiophile’s head spin, not to mention the voice of an unassuming angel, to create intricately layered and emotionally affecting music”
- THE AGE EG’s list of hot Melbourne bands to watch out for, 2008

“For Pikelet virgins, Melbourne’s wonder girl Evelyn Morris is a solo artist, producing fascinating, multi-tiered music using an old accordion, a guitar and a delay pedal…Little lady, big deal.”
- THREE THOUSAND

“Her music under the moniker Pikelet… is based on heavenly harmonies, accordion, acoustic guitar and live loop technology that enables her to perform with the force of four… landing album of the week on Melbourne’s influential RRR radio, critical accolades, and offers of guest spots on other people’s albums”
- ROLLING STONE Hot List ‘07

“Evelyn Morris cooks up deceptively simple delights with her solo acoustic project… Evelyn provides almost every sound on the record: guitar, percussion, accordion - an instrument she took up especially for Pikelet - and lavishly multi-tracked vocals”
- J MAG feature article, Sep 2007

“Her debut solo record is the stuff of charmingly arcane and cryptically beautiful pop… (it) takes her early experimentations to another level; a place where stunningly complex and beauteous pop melodies counteract the sparest of instrumentation”
- THE AGE feature article, 25.5.2007

Inpress live review (July 30, 2008):

The fairy lights are ignited and pot plants positioned as the band assemble. “Hi, we’re Pikelet”, says Evelyn Morris, the woman I was about to call Pikelet. “Tarquin, Matt, Shags and I’m Evelyn,” she later introduces. Epithets aside, if the excellent EP for sale at the busy merch desk is anything to go by, it does seem that Morris is embracing the addition of electronics, drums, bass and clarinet, and as tonight proves, the audience are embracing the idea, too. Straight away it becomes apparent that Morris’s voice is far stronger than those familiar with her better-known songs might expect, and she seems to like singing more forcefully. It could be expected that those better-known songs (Bug in Mouth, Little Man, Beyond The Sky), gentle paeans to solitary characters that suit her homespun delivery, would be the highlights of her set, but it’s clear with the energy she invests into her new songs, that days of quiet meanderings are not what is inspiring her now, and while as beautiful as ever, they’re dwarfed. With a refreshingly minimal use of the delay pedal and battling through technical difficulties, it’s the new songs, three of which conclude the set, that glow the most warmly. Whether these were the same ones nervously debuted at Golden Plains several months ago I’m not sure, but the vaguely disco Brain Allergy and another fantastical character story Toby White show that the creation station that is Evelyn Morris seems to have found another level, working with the other instruments to create rich and intricate backings for her still-Morrisian subjects. A top night that ends with Morris’s adieu of “Keep being rad”, a perfect description of the band’s progress.

- Andy Hazel

Management and bookings: Sophie Best @ Mistletone 0401 704 415 sophie(at)mistletone.net