Folk Bitch Trio – Now Would Be A Good Time
Folk Bitch Trio — the Melbourne/Naarm-based band of Gracie Sinclair (she/her), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Heide Peverelle (they/them) — announce their debut album, Now Would Be A Good Time, out July 25th via Jagjaguwar, and release the single/video, “Cathode Ray.”
Now Would Be A Good Time tells vivid, visceral stories. 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.
Following the lead single “The Actor”, today’s single, “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. Lyrically, the song is about bodily, deeply human anxieties. “It expresses a feeling of being trapped in myself, and wanting to break out of that so violently that I’m literally talking about opening up a body viscerally,” Sinclair explains. “It’s about frustration, and knowing there’s no cheap thrill that’s going to fix that.”
Folk Bitch Trio Tour Dates
Wed. May 14 – London, UK @ St. Pancras Old Church [SOLD OUT] #
Thu. May 15 – Fri. May 16 – Brighton, UK @ The Great Escape
Sat, May 17 – Amsterdam, NL @ London Calling
Mon. May 19 – Paris, FR @ La Mécanique Ondulatoire #
Sat. July 12 – Sun. July 13 – Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Festival
Tue. July 22 – New York, NY @ Night Club 101 %
Thu. July 24 – Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records $
Sun. Aug. 17 – Brecon Beacons, UK @ Green Man Festival
Fri. Sep. 5 – Adelaide, SA @ Jive
Sat. Sep. 6 – Fremantle, WA @ Mojos Bar
Sat. Sep. 13 – Melbourne, VIC @ Corner Hotel
Fri. Sep. 19 – Brisbane, QLD @ The Brightside
Sat. Sep. 20 – Sydney, NSW @ The Landsdowne
Fri. Sep. 26 – Auckland, NZ @ Tuning Fork
Sat. Sep. 27 – Wellington, NZ @ San Fran
Sun. Sep. 28 -Christchurch, NZ @ Loons
# = w/ Ella Ion
% = w/ Bloomsday
$ = w/ Jordan Patterson
#fbtband