FEATURE:
Spotlight
pre-order Now Would Be a Good Time. It is released on 25th July. It is the upcoming album from Folk Bitch Trio. An act that are getting a lot of love and focus right now. I am going to come to some interviews with them. The Australian trio of Grace Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle started in 2020 and have delivered a string of brilliant singles. Their debut album is one you will want to own:
“Folk music has a bad habit of being presented as a deathly serious concern. It’s something you cry to, it’s overly sacred, it’s solemnly considered by critic-historians. But Folk Bitch Trio, former high school friends Heide Peverelle (they/them), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Gracie Sinclair (she/her), have a shared sense of humour that is embedded deep in their music, and that sets it alight, safe from the self-serious traps of the genre.
Now Would Be A Good Time, their debut album, tells vivid, visceral stories, and is funny and darkly ironic in the manner of writers like Mary Gaitskill or Otessa Moshfegh. Their music sounds familiar, but the songs are modern, youthful, singing acutely through dissociative daydreams and galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload, all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s.
“Cathode Ray” opens with caution, its first harmonies arriving in big, looping sighs. It’s vulnerable but a little menacing, with a wide open chorus and a spacious, airy beat anchoring everything. “Moth Song”, a song about unrequited love and “being so spun out by everything that you feel like you’re delusional and hallucinating crazy things,” forms the album’s spare centrepiece, Anita Clark’s undulating violin part drifting in and out of focus as if from a dream.
Other songs aren’t as oblique, instead chronicling brutally familiar moments at the end of relationships: The tense, emotionally volatile torch song “The Actor”, says Peverelle, is about “going to your partner’s one-woman show and then getting broken up with”. “Hotel TV”, a hypnotic, late-night reverie, is about “having a sex dream about somebody else while next to your partner, and your partner being a liar,” explains Pilkington.
The strongest link between the trio, aside from friendship, is music. “We all talked about loving music when we were growing up, and knowing we wanted music to be a big part of our lives,” says Pilkington. That feeling—of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly—was justified: Folk Bitch Trio have already toured across Australia, Europe and the US, supporting bands as disparate as King Gizzard, Alex G and Julia Jacklin. They’ve signed with Jagjaguwar, a home for singular icons and iconoclasts (Bon Iver, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, UMO and others), and they’ve found their first diehard fans with dazzling harmonies and acerbic lyricism that transcend genre expectations and audience lines.
These are the stakes: Learning how to live a life free of lovesickness and loser exes, when to sink into contemporary nihilism and when to have a laugh with your friends, and why being alive can feel so ephemeral and unreal. In this sense, Now Would Be A Good Time feels like a manual for modern living: a missive from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together”.
I am going to come to some recent interviews with the trio. Including a great cover feature from NME. However, going back to last year, there was this sense of anticipation and excitement around the group. I want to move to an interview from 2024 from Atwood Magazine. I am a new convert to Folk Bitch Trio. They are going to go a very long way:
“Atwood Magazine: Great to chat, Gracie, Jeanie, and Heide! For readers who are new your music, how would you describe Folk Bitch Trio to a first timer?
Folk Bitch Trio: It’s a good fun time. Maybe that isn’t what people are expecting but that’s how we like to think of the live show. Our music can be sad and earnest but we actually do have a really good time on stage.
How did the band initially form? I know you debuted your first single in 2022; had you been playing together for a while before then?
Folk Bitch Trio: The band was born pre-COVID in 2019 from us being bored and wanting to make something together. The first single in 2022 was kind of the rebirth post-lockdown.
Where did your band name come from? And how do you feel it serves as an “intro” to folks getting to know who you are and what you’re all about?
Folk Bitch Trio: Folk Bitch Trio just came from calling this band what it is in a pretty unserious way. We think it’s a pretty accurate intro to what you’re going to get.
Speaking of folk, what pulls the three of you to the folk genre and to these rich, wondrous vocal harmonies that fill every song with such beautiful warmth?
Folk Bitch Trio: We were all raised on folk adjacent music, and are all singers, so it was an organic progression to start making that music together.
“God’s a Different Sword” is an especially moving track, with some truly aching lyrics. What’s the story behind this song?
Folk Bitch Trio: The lyrics for this song came from Heide taking themself out on a date to a pizza shop and getting a little wine drunk and then writing almost the entire song. Shout out pizza mein liebe.
PHOTO CREDIT: Bridgette Winten
You’ve said this song is about “relinquishing a pattern, but indulging in the habit ‘just one more time.’” Can we dive deeper into that together? Where in your lives is this pulled from, and how does it resonate with you now?
Folk Bitch Trio: It’s about finding it in you to quit a habit even when it still feels good. The song is about a kind of post breakup euphoria that’s also very existential as you question your life for what it is without this person.
I love how you open with the line, “Am I lucky? Or am I just sane?” - it really helps set the tone from the start, but what really struck me is the refrain, “Could I be good on my own accord? Heaven knows I know need it but god’s a different sword.” What do these lines mean to you, if you don’t mind my asking?
Folk Bitch Trio: Well they are questions, so the answer is that we don’t really know. The song is questioning, so what it all means is pretty ambiguous.
Do you have any personal favorite lines in this track?
Folk Bitch Trio: “If you tell me that you need it, I can get up off the floor.” We’ve all been there.
Folk Bitch Trio © Bridgette WintenWhat do you hope listeners take away from “God’s a Different Sword,” and what have you taken from it as well?
Folk Bitch Trio: Take whatever you want. This song is supposed to be optimistic and curious and life affirming, and we just want people to resonate with it however they like.
What’s on the horizon for Folk Bitch Trio as we look ahead, out at the rest of the year?
Folk Bitch Trio: We are currently on our first EU/US tour, then a national Australia headline when we get home next month. We’ve been on tour a lot this year so looking forward to kicking back over the Australian summer. Big things coming in 2025”.
Before getting to that NME interview, I am coming to an interview from The Music. The Australian website chatted with the remarkable Folk Bitch Trio about their rise and career so far. I would advise everyone to go and seek out this group on social media. Listen to their music. With some exciting dates coming up in the U.S, I am not sure whether they will come to the U.K. soon. I am writing this a few days before Glastonbury starts, so I am not sure if they have been booked or will come here another time:
“The slow burn of the first few years was defined by all the gigs and singles, and since then, the opportunities have been blazing hot. The group’s ascent has been rapid within the last couple of years, yet they admit they’ve been given some legroom to reflect on the realness of it all.
“We started this project just before COVID hit, and that was obviously like a year off, and then, like, a year of pretty stagnant movement,” Sinclair tells. “And I think perhaps if we didn't have that buffer, things would have been maybe a little bit crazier. But when you have, like, private time to soak things up…”
Pilkington adds, “We have very low expectations as well. So, every step of the way, things have felt crazy. Like, things now that feel minuscule compared to the things that are happening to us now felt crazy at the time [sic]."
“And because we're such good friends, I do think that, like, I remember the first time we were interstate as a band, and then the first time we were overseas as a band, like… we've definitely relished in the moments of being like, ‘This is this is insane, and this is really special, and this won't happen again.’ So, I don't think it's lost on us. I think we have time to sort of, even if they are small moments, we're like, ‘Yo, this is crazy guys.’”
Sinclair nods, “It’s definitely all still wild.” Peverelle takes a beat as well, “Yeah. But we do talk a lot, I think, like, we take moments to process together and feel… Which is good, I think.”
Even now, with sold-out rooms across the UK and US added to the pool room and another Europe run around the corner, not much has changed behind the scenes. “We tour-manage ourselves,” Pilkington laughs. “Running around those fucking European train stations with a guitar and a suitcase.”
And still, somehow, they manage to keep their cool through it all. “We maintain our glamour,” Sinclair deadpans. “All the time.”
Even now, as they prepare for the UK showcase festival, The Great Escape, and shows in Amsterdam and Paris, their compass hasn’t shifted.
They still laugh at the absurdity of it all. They still giggle at their own jokes. They still believe in making the most tender, stripped-back music — and pairing it with visuals that are a little bit silly - ergo running around in chainmail for the Analogue clip or shedding a tear for their mums’ stage auditions in The Actor’s clip. Modern-day irony blended with folk-music sincerity.
And maybe that’s the reason they’re still here. Still friends. Still laughing. Still harmonising through the madness of a very fast-moving career.
“Big things,” Sinclair grins when asked what’s next. “Watch this space.”
“Off the hook,” she adds, half joking. “Off the line.”
Whatever it is — it’ll be theirs”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Laidlaw for NME
I am ending with a brilliant NME interview. Grace Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle discussed finding heart and humour in “pathetic little tragedies”. The Melbourne trio are creating so much hype. It is all justified. I would love to see them live one day. By all accounts, they are a group that are as impactful and amazing on the stage as they are in the studio:
“They credit the “other folk bitches – people like Julia Jacklin, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen” as helping to reinvigorate the genre in recent years. “They were the ones that helped us fall back in love with folk and realise that everything’s cool in its own way,” Peverelle nods. Meanwhile, it was a member of another trio that first helped launch them into public consciousness: in a 2021 radio interview, Phoebe Bridgers described their debut single ‘Edie’ as “Boygenius if it was from the ’40s”.
Folk Bitch Trio would rather the wider world judge them on their own merit than try to cast them as Boygenius from down under. “Obviously, it’s different when it’s Phoebe drawing that opinion, as I’m sure it’s much more nuanced, but it’s hard to not see it as a comparison to another triple-femme band because there’s simply not enough of them for people to not go there,” Pilkington says. “It does feel frustrating, but that has nothing to do with Boygenius and everything to do with a lack of attention on femme-led music.”
However, the surrealness of the moment was clearly not lost on them. “She was definitely my number one Spotify listen at the time,” Pilkington smiles. “I guess that was when I started to become aware that people were formulating opinions on us and consuming the music, and that felt completely bizarre.”
Now all aged 23, Folk Bitch Trio have become an unshakeable unit, their close bond helping them deal with the world’s perceptions, both as budding artists taking early steps into the industry – they signed to Jagjaguwar earlier this year – and as young femme-presenting people in the world. “I look at other artists trying to navigate it on their own and I can’t really imagine not having my two other brain cells with me all the time,” Sinclair says.
Pilkington nods: “When you’re in this funny grey area of having the success that we’re so lucky to have had, but also doing small, weird gigs and having strange people approach you, sometimes we feel like our life is a bit like Flight of the Conchords. It becomes fun when your friends are with you, but if you were by yourself, you might be crying and not laughing…”
The same approach of taking tough situations and finding the funny side rings throughout their music, whether in ‘God’s A Different Sword’’s satirical wink to feminist text The Body Keeps The Score or ‘That’s All She Wrote’’s fears of getting “doxxed in the paper”. Peverelle calls their songs “our pathetic little tragedies”. They laugh about how being in your early twenties is “pathetic”, but, as Peverelle says, it’s also “fun, messy – always – but never that bad. Our tragedies are miniscule in the scheme of what’s going on in the world, but they’re our tragedies.”
“And there’s something so important about being able to transform that into art,” Sinclair nods. “There are many things in my life that I would not have survived if it hadn’t been for people transforming their pathetic little tragedies into a song or a piece of art that I could consume”.
Now Would Be a Good Time is out on 25th July. I am excited about the album and seeing how it is received. Melbourne has always been a rich and vibrant musical hub. It has given us so many incredible artists through the years. When it comes to Folk Bitch Trio, they can stand proud…
ALONGSIDE the very best.
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