Melbourne singer-songwriter Joyce Prescher releases the first taste of her new collaboration with songwriter and producer Lachlan Bryan.
Joyce Prescher was born and raised in the Netherlands but has lived in Melbourne for over a decade. Her albums, Home (2017) and Out of My Mind (2022), are filled with songs of isolation and alienation, themes that emerged not only from the reality of finding herself a resident in an unfamiliar place, but also from her unconventional upbringing as a twin with two complicated father-figures in an equally complicated homeland.

“I am very Dutch” admits Joyce with a wry smile, acknowledging the inherent contradictions of a country and people known for being both highly progressive and deeply traditional.

Perhaps “very European” is even more accurate – particularly if we’re here to describe the sound of Joyce Prescher’s songs, each of which she delivers with a delicacy befitting their lilting melodies, meandering time-signatures and often melancholic lyrics.

This European-ness has never been more evident than on her upcoming single release, ‘My Heroics’, a song written and originally recorded by Belgian indie rock band Absynthe Minded. It’s the first time Prescher has ever released a cover and it is in collaboration with Melbourne songwriter and producer Lachlan Bryan.

“Joyce and I became great friends in ‘the quiet times’ around 2021 and 2022”, explains Lachlan. “We would walk around the empty streets of St Kilda and talk about music and life. I was particularly enchanted by the images of the underground music scenes of the Netherlands and Belgium. I’d never heard these bands or songs before, and eventually we had the idea to record some of them”.

“These songs and bands will always be so near to my heart.” Joyce recounts. “I listened to them a lot during my ‘formative’ years and have such profound memories of the live venues and festivals I would go to in my late teens and early twenties with my close friends back home. I have a soft spot for our Flemish neighbours in particular, so many great bands were releasing music and touring during that time. It’s been real fun recording these songs, I hope we’ve done them justice, but I think we have.”

‘My Heroics’ is the first of these recordings, made after hours in a high-rise apartment, to see the light of day. It has been re-imagined as a duet, retaining the urgency of the original but switching out the polished early-2000s production for angular guitars, swirling keyboards and a hypnotic, electronic groove. Joyce gently whispers her vocals whilst Lachlan croons in the lowest parts of his register. It is quite unlike anything either artist has done before.

Somehow, through this process of collaboration and re-interpretation, Joyce shows us even more of herself in this latest piece. ‘My Heroics’, and its companion piece which will soon follow, show us what a unique voice she presents, and whet our appetites for her next original songs, on the not-too-distant horizon.