Music: Sweet Billy Pilgrim

A hidden gem amongst the pile of also-rans

Back in 2009, Tim Eisenberg was working under a sink, as a plumber, when he got a call to say his band’s album Twice Born Men had just got nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. But, few can have been as critically acclaimed, and yet hidden from the mainstream, as Sweet Billy Pilgrim.
Formed in 2003, they released their debut album in 2005. We Just Did What Happened and No-One Came, a work that was made in a garden shed with just a laptop and mic. Following Twice Born Men, came the brilliant Crown and Treaty in 2012, but which saw the band nearly split up. “For all the years of hard work and commitment, our progress seemed painfully slow, and we apparently had very little to show for our efforts,” says frontman Tim Eisenberg. “And then it dawned on me that I’d be recording songs even if no one bought them; that this wasn’t really something I did, it was something I was; that really, if one person had a profound emotional reaction to something I was part of, then that was an amazing thing, and progress was more than Facebook likes and album sales.

“So, being part of this band became about recognising and overcoming an encroaching cynicism on my part, because it’s cynicism which kills creativity; kills love; kills joy; kills curiosity. Yes, I could moan about the state of the music industry. Yes, I could complain about Spotify not paying me anything. Or, I could make an amazing record with people I love, and play it to people who care (or even play it to people until they care).”
Describing their sound as ‘thrash pastel’, but which in reality is an indescribable mix of folk, rock, electronica, americana and pop, the three original members Eisenberg, Anthony Bishop and Alistair Hamer, have recently been joined by Jana Carpenter, and together on Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s fourth album Motorcade Amnesiacs, they have produced another effortlessly classy album, that is rich in intensity and vast in scope.
Meanwhile, you can watch a short film for the new single, Slingshot Gin, which features a host of British talent as well as Eisenberg and Carpenter, in exploring fractured relationships.
Green Door Store, Tues 15 Sept, 7.30pm, £8