Some chill for a Saturday night. A session from Grace Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle, otherwise known as Folk Bitch Trio from Melbourne Australia, doing a session for John Kennedy’s X-Posure program on Radio X in London, July 25th.
Just so happens, July 25th is the day Folk Bitch Trio’s debut album “Now Would Be A Good Time” is released and a tour is gearing up to get the word out. So far, the press has been over-the-moon in support. Here’s a sample by way of the website Music, Musings and Such and a review that came out only two days ago – so you get all first impressions fresh and very enthusiastic:
“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. . .
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”.
Head over to Music, Musings and Such for the full article by Sam Liddicott, it’s an enjoyable read and captures the spirit of the band admirably well.
In the meantime, press Play and dive in – they are coming to the States (and have already been here this year), so keep your eyes glued for updates.
