The members of Folk Bitch Trio may have known each other since high school, but they don’t exactly share the same musical background. Jeanie Pilkington was raised on a diet of Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams; Heide Peverelle is open about their love of pop music both classic and contemporary, while Gracie Sinclair’s taste leans darker and more gothic. But there’s a reason they’ve stuck with the name they came up with as teenagers, retaining the stark minimalism of their Jagjaguwar labelmate Angel Olsen’s early work rather than synthesizing and dramatizing their influences like their gothic contemporaries in The Last Dinner Party or Black Country, New Road’s newly baroque, female-fronted sound. (The Staves are an obvious comparison point, though this trio’s subject matter is often more sensual and even bloody). Subtly varied, searching, and beautiful in stranger ways than meets the eye, the songs on Now Would Be a Good Time were workshopped on tour and recorded in Auckland over the winter of 2024, so in some ways they feel tied to a moment in time (both good and bad). But all three members are unequivocally yearning for more, something to believe in as a union. “Eternal pain they warn me,” they sing on the closing track, “Eternal love I pray.”
1. God’s a Different Sword
The opening track revolves around a killer line: “Well heaven knows I need it but God’s a different sword.” It remains open to interpretation – could be an old flame, a self-destructive pattern, a bad habit – but all three singers know Now Would Be a Good Time to bury it in the past. “Here I go/ Just one more,” they indulge, both exasperated and soaring, warming us into their world with a weary familiarity.
3. Hotel TV
The second track, written mostly by Gracie Sinclair while in a hotel in Brisbane, slips in and out of consciousness, growing tired of a distant relationship – “Can I get some rest?” goes the chorus – as her body, too, craves sleep. Over the white noise of local ads, she has a sex dream about someone else while literally lying next to her partner. Compared to the haziness of the first song, we get more interpersonal details (“Say you wanna get sober/ I say, I’d like to see you try”), while shards of electric guitar brush up against the acoustic, like a throbbing head against a soft pillow.
4. The Actor
‘The Actor’ bristles with the tension of a story that’s not so hard to parse out: the narrator falls in love with an actor and gets broken up with at their one-woman show. There’s a sense of continuity with the previous song, as the opening scene finds “the actor lying on the pillow next to me.” But they don’t fall asleep so much as wake to the reality that theirs is a sinking ship, and everyone’s there to bear witness. “‘I’ll see you at opening night,’” they sing finally, relaying the final blow. “And then won’t look you in the eye.”
5. Moth Song
The trio strip things back even further on ‘Moth Song’, letting their three-part harmonies – but especially Sinclair’s delicate yet piercing voice – do the heavy lifting. Yet it’s the addition of Anita Clark’s violin that solidifies this as the album’s emotional centerpiece, no longer relaying a filthy dream but living inside a surreal, inescapable one. The narrator is helplessly and unrequitedly in love, fueling some of the group’s most pointedly poetic and affecting lyrics: “I’m checking every curb/ With the corner of my shoe/ So I don’t fall into an abyss/ When I reach the end of you.” It stretches out to five minutes, double the length of both songs it’s sandwiched between. Yet it’s also without a doubt the most arresting.
6. I’ll Find a Way
A motivational hymn becomes more bittersweet the further their voices carry it along, one of them audibly faltering at the end of the line “Many’s the time/ When love seemed so fine.” Folk Bitch Trio aren’t aiming for angelic perfection with their harmonies, even when they seem to play to type. It’s not just beauty but that bit of rawness, after all, that keeps them going.
7. Cathode Ray
Only the second song on the record to feature drums, ‘Cathode Ray’ is full-bodied, gutsy, and unnerving, and like the first song, you aren’t exactly sure why. Cheap distractions on a screen aren’t doing it anymore; the singer seeks release in something real yet dives into a violent, cathartic fantasy. The horror behind the beauty.
8. Foreign Bird
Now Would Be a Good Time thrives in the subtle variations between its many pretty songs, and distinguishing ‘Foreign Bird’ is producer Tom Healy’s tasteful pedal steel and the guitar feedback that draws it to a close. It’s a powerful ending, even if the imagery leading up to it feels somewhat indistinct.
9. That’s All She Wrote
Clark’s violin returns to accentuate the devastating sensuality of ‘That’s All She Wrote’, which sways from the loneliness of pleasure to complicit objectification to a murderous scene, all flattened by the simple yearning to go back home. It’s another song that sounds like it was written on tour, hanging comfortably in an uneasy space.
10. Sarah
Guitar atmospherics give way to the most spacious-sounding song on the record, as lyrically searching as it is confrontational: “I’d like you to see me without your eyes/ Please tell me you might go and try,” they sing, as if to the same actor who won’t even meet their gaze. You could imagine its guitar solo ringing out in a stadium, but it’s still an intimate, subtle affair.
11. Mary’s Playing the Harp
The closer builds on one of the most beautiful melodies on the record, justifying the decision to track it live with just three voices and a guitar. The trio break the fourth wall by singing that they’ve got fourteen shows down and ten more to go, cementing Now Would Be a Good Time as the rare debut album that also feels like a tour diary. More unique still is the group’s ability to sound unified in those diaristic reflections, be it in the arrangement of their harmonies or a chorus that echoes out a shared sentiment. “I’m a long way from home,” they sing, reprising an earlier theme before cleverly twisting another: “I’m a nice clear view.” And as Mary’s playing the harp, they may be thinking of different things, but their yearning sounds the same.
