Feature: Folk Bitch Trio - Now Would Be A Good Time
Folk Bitch Trio 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 tells vivid, visceral stories, workshopped on tour and written specifically with their shared connection in mind, their album debut is built on minimalist, idiosyncratic arrangements with voices and guitar taking centre stage.
A manual for modern living from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together.
'Hotel TV' is a hypnotic, late-night reverie about “having a sex dream about somebody else while next to your partner,” explains Pilkington.
At the song’s conclusion Pilkington sings: “Cause I lay beside him / In the night / And I had a filthy dream / To the noise of the hotel TV.”
Jeanie continues, "Hotel TV speaks to how unsettling it is when you feel the first signs of a love going a bit rotten. I was inspired by those low budget ads that you get from local businesses when you’re in a niche country town. It’s also about being in love with a liar. I wrote the bulk of the song and Gracie wrote the hook, ‘can I get some rest’, when we were sleep deprived in a hotel in Brisbane. Our vibe check for the music video was dire country town, bored and cheeky, loosely inspired by both our childhoods and what we’ve had to do for fun touring regional Australia."
Now Would Be A Good Time is funny and darkly ironic, previewed already with the tense, emotionally volatile torch song 'The Actor'; the bodily and human anxiety fuelled 'Cathode Ray'; and the sly innuendo of 'God's A Different Sword' nodding to the clichéd, over-referenced millennial self-help book.
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.
“But for me at least, when I looked into the future, it was this relatively mysterious thing.”
Joining forces as a group demystified that future. That feeling - of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly- was justified.
Folk Bitch Trio’s latest album Now Would Be A Good Time is available to stream now via Jagjaguwar.
CLICK HERE TO STREAM NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME