Folk Bitch Trio — the Melbourne/Naarm-based band of Gracie Sinclair (she/her), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Heide Peverelle (they/them) — released their debut album, Now Would Be A Good Time, in July this year via Jagjaguwar. Their music sounds familiar, built on a foundation of the music they’ve loved throughout their lives–gnarled Americana, classic rock, piquant, and clear-eyed balladry. Yet the songs are modern and youthful, with the trio singing acutely through dissociative daydreams, galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload— all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s.
Listening to Folk Bitch Trio, it’s clear this is a band of three distinct points of view. Pilkington grew up with two musician parents and brings formative memories of watching them perform, of listening to Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams, and of her own imagined path as a career musician. Peverelle spends their spare time making art and furniture; those hobbies, as well as their love of pop music old and new, articulate a love for the tactile, the home-grown and the hand-made. Sinclair is the self-proclaimed jester of the group, but her taste skews dark, gothic, baroque and dramatic, expressed as a love of opera and ballet as well as musicians as wide-ranging as Patti Smith, Nirvana and Tchaikovsky. They’ve known each other since high school, and as soon as they started singing together five years ago, “the chemistry of being inspired by each other was evident from the get-go,” says Sinclair.
Produced on tape in Auckland by Tom Healy, the album’s warm, minimalist sound lets the trio’s voices shine.
Just released is this stunning live performance of album standout ‘Foreign Bird’ from Vevo Studios in New York.
Praise for Folk Bitch Trio
“Sublime singing – and subtle strangeness”. “Breathtaking vocal harmonies, razor-sharp lyrical edge and delicate darkness set this Melbourne band apart” – NME
“The arrangements feel tactile and imperfect as guitars chime, bass notes linger, and feedback hums like a distant memory. On Foreign Bird and Sarah, the trio play with dynamics, voices and guitar lines rising and falling in waves.” – John Bradbury – 13th Floor
Folk Bitch Trio – Interviews
Folk Bitch Trio’s Debut Album Now Would Be A Good Time – Lucia Taylor – Under The Radar
Folk Bitch Trio: “Being pathetic and lonely is great space for songwriting …” – The Guardian
Folk Bitch Trio
Now Would Be A Good Time
Tracklist:
- God’s A Different Sword
- Hotel TV
- The Actor
- Moth Song
- I’ll Find A Way (To Carry It All)
- Cathode Ray
- Foreign Bird
- That’s All She Wrote
- Sarah
- Mary’s Playing The Harp
Folk Bitch Trio online:
