Folk Bitch Trio’s NME cover drops the morning I speak with the three Aussie besties for the first time. Cast in a warm peach haze, Jeanie Pilkington, Heide Peverelle, and Gracie Sinclair huddle together, each in a pose that mirrors the personality they’d soon radiate through my computer screen. Sinclair, the brunette, is cheeky and animated, the spirit of Betty Boop floating around her; Peverelle, the redhead, is introspective and steady, tucked in the center, hand to their chin; Pilkington, the blonde, is grounded, soft yet sharp, peering through her curtain bangs with a knowing gaze. Naturally, it’s what I lead with: How does it feel to be on a cover previously graced by everyone from The Fab Four to Rihanna?
“Being on the cover of a magazine is just simultaneously confronting and baller and exciting,” Pilkington says. “But I don’t think I realized how crazy it was until I told my dad [Craig Pilkington of The Killjoys]. For him, he was like, ‘That is insane, that didn’t used to happen.’”
The band has had a relatively quick ascent. A steady output of singles since 2020 (and a Phoebe Bridgers co-sign) led to sharing stages with Aussie mainstays like Julia Jacklin and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. But when the Naarm three-piece first began work on their debut full-length, Now Would Be A Good Time (out July 25), they weren’t sure where it would lead them. “We didn’t have any label backing,” Peverelle explains. “We had no idea what we were going to do in terms of release.” (They have since inked a deal with Jagjaguwar, home to the likes of Bon Iver and Sharon Van Etten.) Regardless, they spent a month at the dawn of 2024 in Auckland, recording at Roundhead Studios and living together in an Airbnb. “It sounds like a lot,” Pilkington says. “But we leaned into it. It was winter, we were getting cozy, watching movies, making dinner together.”
“We also do that all the time,” Peverelle adds. “Even at home, we’re always together. On tour, we’ll be with each other, mostly sleeping in the same beds and the same rooms for months at a time. It was almost easier [in Auckland] because we all had our own rooms, which felt like such a luxury.”
That intimacy is built into the way the band writes, starting with Peverelle sharing bits of “Edie” with Pilkington back in 2020. “The beginning ethos of Folk Bitch Trio is that I was terrified of trying to be a songwriter. So was Heide, so was Gracie,” Pilkington recalls. “So much of it in the beginning was us trying to navigate that feeling and creating this solid foundation where it was way less scary to present a song you’d written when you were singing it in three-part harmony. It’s a good hack. It’s quite a selfish thing, actually.”
Most Folk Bitch Trio songs begin as private drafts, lyrically driven and written alone (“To have a really good lyrical song come out from more than one person would be quite difficult,” Sinclair says), then get shaped sonically as a group. But sharing early ideas still brings up nerves. “The other day I showed these guys a song and I got the exact same nervous feeling as when we were 17,” Peverelle admits. “Especially with something that’s really unfinished. That’s when it’s the most nerve-wracking. It’s so out in the open to pick at. But we’re there to listen and contribute. It’s a very beautiful, collaborative thing, but it’s still scary.”
Sinclair agrees. “We care about each other’s opinions.”
That innate belief in each other, and the desire to make each other proud, sits at the heart of Folk Bitch Trio. “I might not necessarily have the goal to believe in myself if it was just myself,” Sinclair says. “But if I’m looking at two people whom I adore and think the world of, then it’s easy to want to compliment them.” It’s what gives their harmonies that tight, piercing Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young feeling, why their songs feel equally refreshing and comfortable, and why the band performs them with such a calming ease. They simply can’t stop falling more into place as they keep going. “More and more as I write, I can hear clearer Gracie and Heide’s voices in my head,” says Pilkington. “We’ve really just locked in that way.”
Locking in allowed them the confidence to let songs develop into their final forms over multiple sessions. Almost by instinct, Folk Bitch Trio has been playing the long game, stretching these songs over years-long periods and myriad settings to see what would change along the way. They were road-tested into oblivion, taking a different shape each time they took the stage. It’s how they realized recording live was the only way to get the intimate looseness they were chasing. “A lot of the magic came from doing a slightly imperfect vocal take, when you’re a little bit distracted,” says Pilkington. “You’re able to just get in the zone that you would be live, and maybe you do something you’re not conscious of. There’s quite a bit of imperfection in there that I think keeps it true.”
The warbling electric guitar on “Sarah” wasn’t added until the final session, a last-minute swing that ended up being exactly what the track was missing. Now, it’s hard to imagine the song having the same kind of emotional build without Peverelle’s sweeping electric passes mixing with the acoustics. Taking such deliberate time on these songs also gives the lyrical meaning a chance to develop, with the Trio growing up alongside their music until it turns into a relic of their former selves, then takes on a whole new meaning. “I think the period from 18 to 23, which is how long we’ve been in the band, is quite an influential time,” Peverelle says. “You grow up a lot. I feel like every year, you’re a bit of a different person in your twenties. So it’s strange, but I think it’s quite a beautiful thing to grow with the song and put your new meanings onto it.”
Emotional growth, and the mess that comes with it, is embedded into all the songs on Now Would Be A Good Time. It’s in the quietly furious unraveling of “Hotel TV,” the surrealist fuzz of “Moth Song,” and the sarcastic delivery of “Am I lucky or am I just sane?” on “God’s A Different Sword.” (“When it gets overly earnest and serious, you have to bring in some humor,” Pilkington says. “Otherwise, I think it’s just a little too boring.”) It’s all interpersonal static and intrusive thoughts; slippery feelings that resist easy framing. The result is an astonishing record, music anchored by harmonies so instinctual they sound almost telepathic.
It’s hard not to associate Folk Bitch Trio with their genre namesake. But the band views folk with more fluidity. “I often feel like we’re a rock band, but we just don’t have drums,” Sinclair says. The absence of a kit doesn’t blunt the impact. If anything, it allows the singing to do the heavy lifting. “The way we write is so inspired by folk,” Pilkington adds. “But a lot of it is probably a bit more derivative of rock.” There are some nods to the greats—a Ted Lucas cover, Mitchellian acoustics on “Mary’s Playing the Harp”—but the spirit of folk music isn’t just in the jangly acoustics and tight harmonies. It’s also in the depth of storytelling, the unflinching vulnerability, and the deep-rooted friendship. “You kind of have the privilege of being able to be quite unprofessional in front of your colleagues when they’re your two best friends and mates,” Pilkington says.
A few weeks later, days before the release of Now Would Be A Good Time (and hours after the Ozzy news broke), I catch Folk Bitch Trio at their sold-out Night Club 101 show in Manhattan’s East Village. The room fills up just as they take the stage, each in their own rendition of head-to-toe black; Pilkington leans whimsical with a Michelle Phillips-meets-Stevie Nicks vibe, while Peverelle stands stoic and magnetic. Sinclair dons her signature winged eyeliner and knee-high boots, flashing the sign of the horns more than once throughout the night. Peverelle comes out with their electric (a Gibson ES variant, if I had to guess, which stayed strapped to them the entire set), and Pilkington and Sinclair each with their acoustics (though there were only ever two guitars going at once). They open with an a cappella cover of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place” that’s so deliberate and moving that it takes me a second even to place the song. It’s hard not to feel the energy rippling between the three of them as they sing—it emanates off the stage into the crowd. It’s the kind of performance where you know you’re watching people fully wrapped up in and committed to their craft. They play most of the new album, but throw in “Analogue” as a treat.
Each song builds a stirring tension that’s broken with their between-track tuning banter. It was equal parts silly and grateful, often topped off with a “What the hell, we’re in New York!” moment, as if they were so lost in each other they’d forgotten where they were. Sinclair went on a tangent about her “piece of shit” acoustic guitar repeatedly falling off its stand, and how she listened to Black Sabbath as she got ready. Peverelle then turned to the crowd to ask, “Did anyone else listen to Sabbath today?” As they cheer in reply, Pilkington cuts them off with, “Well, this is a Folk Bitch Trio song,” launching straight into “That’s All She Wrote” amid the laughter.
That song also spawned one of my favorite moments of their set: the three of them taking a few steps back from their mics and letting their vocals rip on the last chorus. For all her sarcasm and wit, Pilkington also delivered one of the most poignant asides of the night: “I feel like a passenger in a new chapter of my life right now. And I don’t know how to act.” That sense was collective, the anticipatory buzz for new music filling up the room. As they played the opening chords of “Gods A Different Sword” to close the show, I had the sudden epiphany that this is going to be something I’ll brag about years down the line: how I saw Folk Bitch Trio, in the moment right before their moment. Now, they’ve convinced me, is a good time.
