Us

Tinkering about somewhere between the earthy and the ethereal, Sweet Billy Pilgrim scrape strings and tap away at laptops and try to make beautiful things.

Their debut album was "we just did what happened and no one came", a collection of songs recorded in a draughty shed with a cast of spiders and crispy moths. Mojo magazine awarded it four stars and The Sunday Times called it, ‘a rather special debut’, making the single ‘Stars Spill Out of Cups’ one of their songs of the year. The band were just pleased as punch to find it in the racks of HMV in Watford, sandwiched between The Sweet and Swervedriver.

Since then, they've turned careful hands to remixing, most notably 'bringing a fierce pop quality' to David Sylvian's 'The Heart Knows Better' for his 'The Good Son vs. the Only Daughter - The Blemish Remixes' project, and buggering about with Steve Jansen’s ‘Conversation Over’ from the ‘Slope’ album, Tim also contributing vocals and lyrics to the album for the song ‘Sleepyard’.

Second album, ‘Twice Born Men’ was released on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label recently, to four star reviews in Mojo and Uncut, and a 5 star 'CD of the Week' in the Sunday Times. Following collaborations with folktronica luminary Adem, Norwegian electronicists Punkt, and successful shows at the Royal Opera House, The Barbican and festivals in Spain and Norway, Sweet Billy Pilgrim are building fires to warm their little musical corner while they wait for planning permission to build their ramshackle beach huts on those tiny, storm-bruised plots inside us all. Should it not be granted – they’re prepared to settle for a gazebo.
Twice Born Men was recently named as a Barclaycard Mercury Music Award 'Album of the Year'

About the debut album:

"Disturbing and beautiful, layered and arranged with funereal precision." (8/10) - Americana - UK
"...stunning..." (8.5 /10) - *sixeyes

"This calm, pretty folktronica is strange but not difficult: there are choruses here that, if Chris Martin had stumbled across them, would have shifted another million Coldplay albums. A rather special debut." (3/5) - Mark Edwards (Sunday Times)

"Elsenburg's perfectly shaped songs have the same power as magic realist short stories that sieve the emotions and leave you reduced to jelly." (****) - Mojo Magazine

About second album 'Twice Born Men':

CD of the Week (*****), Sunday Times

Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize Album of the Year 2009

"A fascinating antidote to the falsehood and artifice prevalent in current pop music." BBC website.

**** Uncut magazine.

**** Mojo magazine.

"An unassuming thing of minor beauty." The Wire magazine.

****1/2 MusicOMH website.

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