Australian band Folk Bitch Trio on their inspirations, creative process, and debut album 'Now Would Be A Good Time' • Interview • DIY Magazine

“We often joke about being in a young marriage,” smiles Jeanie Pilkington of Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio. “We’re financially tied to each other through contracts, creativity and friendship - but in this relationship, music is the sex!” Her bandmates Heide Peverelle and Gracie Sinclair grin. “It underpins our entire lives. Music is the climax!”

The Australian group are huddled together on the floor of Heide’s bedroom - apparently also the birthplace of the band - to join our video call. It’s Friday morning here, but evening for the group, who are about to go on a glamorous night out - to their accountants’ end of financial year party. We’re assured that it’s a lot more fun than it sounds: “He’s one of our best friend’s dads, so it goes off - and it’s a free bar,” Gracie insists.

By now, the best friends are getting used to this kind of rock’n’roll lifestyle; they’re soon embarking on a huge US and European tour in support of debut album, ‘Now Would Be A Good Time’. And, after a sold-out London headline show and multiple slots at The Great Escape, they’re already garnering a strong reputation in the UK. It’s unsurprising really, given their harmony soaked, ethereal songs about “friendship, sex, nostalgia, heartbreak, being a touring musician, and mild self indulgence”.

The result of such a heady combination is layered, playful tracks reminiscent of ‘70s American group The Roches. When it comes to Folk Bitch Trio though, those similarly simple, now-vintage sounds are wedded with a fresh, humorous and youthful approach. Their influences span everything from Laura Marling and Big Thief, to 21 Savage and Radiohead, and the band are determined, despite their name, not to be pigeonholed to folk alone.

“We’re not binary in that way,” says Heide. “We love and admire folk music, but we’re not very orthodox or traditional.” Jeanie agrees: “There have been so many times in history where there seemed like a lot of rules in folk. I think there are definitely songwriters trying to follow [them], but I don’t think we are that. I think we just try to say what’s there.”

“We’re so in sync as people. We spend so much time together and work so closely together, it kind of bleeds into all elements.”

— Heide Peverelle

This straightforward knack for storytelling has developed throughout the past five years, after they started the band aged 17. According to Heide, the friends were just looking for an excuse to “hang out together and avoid doing schoolwork”. “Guitars kept popping up, and we kept doing more and more singing,” remembers Gracie. “It was a very beautiful space to be vulnerable and intimate and trusting.”

That closeness radiates through their debut, on which they seamlessly switch between singing lead parts and playing guitar. It makes for a really relaxed and balanced performance, all captured authentically via tape recording. “You go into the studio in the morning, turn on the tape machine and wait for it to warm up - it smells so good,” reminisces Jeanie. Romanticism aside, why choose a less accommodating means for laying tracks down? “It’s about becoming less of a perfectionist,” explains Heide. “It just makes you really present and captures exactly what’s going on. There’s no immediate gratification, which I think takes out a lot of the temptation to over-indulge.”

That’s clear on the album’s laid-bare singles - the deliciously mellow ‘The Actor’, ‘Cathode Ray’ and ‘Moth Song’ - on which the trio’s voices combine so naturally it sounds as though they’re siblings. “We know each other’s vocal tendencies, so I know what you’re gonna do next,” says Heide, looking at the others. “We’re so in sync as people. We spend so much time together and work so closely together, it kind of bleeds into all elements.”

With such a strong bond at their core, the band’s favourite moments are born from their experiences as friends - not their career accomplishments. “It’s the adventures we’ve had and the people we’ve met,” says Jeanie, of their ever-growing highlights reel. “It’s really hard to put into words, because so many things that have happened weren’t a goal, but still felt like ticking something off your bucket list.”

Adventures and side quests aside, though, making music is still their beating heart. “It’s our whole lives,” Heide says simply, “it’s forever there and always will be.”

‘Now Would Be A Good Time’ is out now via Jagjaguwar.

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