Folk Bitch Trio find humour in humiliation

As it turns out, I’d confused the Leonardo Hotel with the Leonardo Royal Hotel. When I finally arrive at the right place (flustered and apologetic), I’m met not with frustration, but with patience, warmth, and an immediate sense of safety from the Australian outfit. As I sit across from Gracie Sinclair (she/her), Heide Peverelle (they/them), and Jeanie Pilkington (she/her), I realise I’ve stumbled into the perfect company to understand the irony of the situation – a group who take the small humiliations of daily life and turn them into beautiful artefacts.

Therein lies the simple magic of Folk Bitch Trio. “Humiliating things that happen to you as a young person are always simultaneously tragic,” Pilkington tells me, “and for us – three fem white girls from Melbourne – there’s always a little bit of ridiculousness and satire in how seriously we take our experiences as tragedies. Even though my songs about being heartbroken come from a very genuine and earnest place, we can always see the humour in those situations.” It’s not performative irony or a forced contrast, it’s just a snapshot of how life can feel as a twenty-something. The trio finds understanding through one another by not taking themselves too seriously in this balancing act to neutralise coming-of-age resentment. It’s a component of their identity that even boils down to the name.

“We’re called Folk Bitch Trio; that points to it being a little bit pathetic,” Pilkington continues, as Peverelle and Sinclair laugh in agreement. “That’s always present, even when the music is beautiful.”

Their debut album Now Would Be A Good Time offers no simple resolution to adolescent strife. Instead, it leans fully into the bittersweet blur of love, loss, and self-doubt. When I ask the band about how they integrate these moments into their songwriting, they tell me that there’s never one true “ah-ha!” moment of deciding that specific stories have to become songs. Take “The Actor”, in which Peverelle writes about attending her partner’s one-woman show, only to be dumped shortly after. “It’s a very specific story that’s true,” she says, “but I didn’t have the experience and go, ‘Oh, I’ve got to put this in a song.’ It just kind of happens.”

This spontaneity is also what precipitated the formation of Folk Bitch Trio. When the band first began singing together five years ago, Peverelle shared a song they’d written called “Edie” which they regarded as a bad song. Yet, Pilkington saw something special in it, and she was so inspired that she messaged Peverelle and Sinclair, asking whether they’d be interested in starting a “folk bitch trio”. It was an offer that was hard to refuse. And while they took some time in experiencing making music with one another as a shared hobby, there was a moment that compelled them to realise that things could go further – they could make a career out of doing what they love.

“When songwriting became a big part of it rather than just singing, that’s when it started to become something that had its own identity,” Pilkington explains. But even before this realisation, creating together was something that the trio took seriously from the very beginning. They found their sound and hit the ground running, scheduling in weekly studio rehearsals, effectively fortifying their bond and their craft. Their approach to songwriting that ultimately changed the trajectory of their creative moment was less focused on documenting specific events, but more about distilling feelings with a profound emotional intensity. And they embrace the unfiltered direction that can lead into unpredictable expressions.

Take “Cathode Ray”, a track that Sinclair describes as “expressing 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.” There’s an incredibly thoughtful depth that comes with articulating such raw sentiments. But, she adds, “I didn’t decide to design it that way… I was feeling that way internally, and there’s so much catharsis that can come from trying to express abstract feelings through words.” She then laughs, “But ‘Cathode Ray’ is totally hyperbolic and metaphorical!”

As a result, Now Would Be A Good Time is a record shaped by the authenticity of shared experience both in process and subject matter. Although many of the songs were written separately, it’s done with immense consideration for each other. “We always have each other in mind as co-performers, but also as audience,” Sinclair shares. Gesturing to Pilkington and Sinclair, Peverelle adds, “When I think about having you both in mind, it’s like you’re there and in the room even though you’re not. You’re kind of in the room, but not in the room.” Pilkington then continues, “It’s like a bar. A standard.” Beyond the music, the trio hold considerable emotional space for each other. “We probably carry a lot of subconscious emotional baggage for each other,” Pilkington admits.

Years of life in close quarters has made that connection second nature. Up until just a week before we met, Sinclair and Peverelle had lived together for four years, with Pilkington residing just around the corner. “We’re with each other most days in Melbourne,” Peverelle says. On tour, the emotional entanglement runs even deeper. “If one of us is heartbroken and we’re on tour, it’s kind of going to be a shared experience,” Pilkington tells me. “If someone’s not doing well or going through something they're going to write a song about, we’re all able to have our own individual perspective of how we felt when that was happening. So even if two of us didn’t write any of the lyrics, it feels like there’s such a huge part of it that we have written by sharing the experience.”

Their three separate perspectives converge seamlessly. Live, it feels like something otherworldly. Having seen the trio perform at London’s St. Pancras Old Church and Komedia Brighton in the few days leading up to our conversation, there was a striking consistency in their stage presence. Whether surrounded by the high walls of a church or the low hang of a basement venue, their mesmeric command prevails. They’re grounded by routine. The trio always stand in the same configuration, often dressed in similar ways. “Even if we’re in a completely different setting, you can kind of tap into this thing that makes it feel like it’s just the same,” Pilkington says.

“We’ve spoken about it recently – sometimes we’ll be feeling really uneasy, but as soon as we’re on stage, there’s this equilibrium,” Peverelle adds. Their connection steadies them, no matter the crowd, venue, or hemisphere – a necessary strength when they’ve been called to support artists such as Alex G, Julia Jacklin, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. For three people brought together by their deep-rooted love for music, occupying these slots validated their artistry. “It feels really good to play shows where we aren’t perceived as easy listening music,” Pilkington says with a sense of both relief and gratitude.

Something that remains important to Folk Bitch Trio – despite their name indicating a folk disposition – is not being pigeonholed into any particular genre. Their relationship with folk music is fond and longstanding, but it is not defining. Their influences and live presence often skew louder, darker, or more emotionally jagged than the title might suggest. “We have more nuance from rock influences and edgy stuff, which may be more present in our music than folk influences.” The trio aren’t looking to uphold tradition. They are deconstructing the narrative that folk music has to be serious, sacred, or uncompromising.

But folk spirit is maintained on Now Would Be A Good Time through the method of recording; committing the album to tape, embracing minimalism and desire to simply capture three voices in a room, all the way down to the small movements of creaking chairs and flickering light switches. “It brought the folk back in a way that felt really true to the influence that we wanted to be heard, with more Seventies references to Laurel Canyon, and people like Neil Young or Joni Mitchell.”

At first listen, you’d never guess that the trio listened to A$AP Rocky or 21 Savage between takes to keep them motivated in the studio. Or that they’d incorporated sound bits of rain and yelling, and even out-of-tune slide guitar and the whir of a miniature fan on “That’s All She Wrote”. But Now Would Be A Good Time serves as a general statement of who Folk Bitch Trio are. “It’s us as a band, as people, and as friends. I’m so proud of how accurate it is as a summary of what we love doing and creating,” Pilkington says. “Here it is,” Sinclair continues. “We have put everything into it, and we’re not holding back in trying to make it as good as possible.”

And ultimately, Folk Bitch Trio transcend self-expression through their music. The songs are a medium for their intimacy. “You see each other at so many different scales of being,” Pilkington tells me. “It’s the greatest companionship I think you can experience,” Perevelle adds. Sinclair continues, “It’s very much like being in a relationship, or having the extreme intimacy of a relationship, bar the physical element of a romantic or sexual partnership.” Yet, the absence of that element only sharpens the emotional closeness that they’ve built. “A lot of a romantic relationship can be bound by physical intimacy, and we don’t have that.”

“We had to figure out a way to make it work. And it’s the music,” Pilkington muses. In front of me, the trio pause as they appear to collectively come to a realisation. “That’s it: the music is the sex!”

When things get difficult, Folk Bitch Trio can look to what they create – a vessel of intimacy, kindness, and affection – to bring them back to themselves. They aren’t just coasting through the wreckage. They’re working on it, together.