Album review: Now Would Be a Good Time by Folk Bitch Trio, a four-star debut

With their confiding lyrics and vocals alike, these three Melbourne musicians strike a chord by singing together as an age-old conduit for emotional release.

Melbourne folk music act Folk Bitch Trio, whose debut album 'Now Would Be A Good Time' was released in 2025. Picture: Copper Taylor-Bogaars

Album reviews for week of July 19 2025:

 

FOLK

Now Would Be a Good Time

Folk Bitch Trio

Jagjaguwar

★★★★

Close harmonies are a warm, flowing signature for Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio. But true to that name, there’s appealing lyrical thorniness under the intricate vocal layering between Heide Peverelle, Jeanie Pilkington and Gracie Sinclair. On this debut album, the three sing in turn and in unison over often not much more than a guitar or two, harmonising together as an age-old conduit for emotional release. The storytelling is refreshingly candid throughout, peppered with subtle jabs at the songs’ subjects. Hotel TV recounts having a “filthy dream” about someone else while in bed with a partner who’s not exactly dependable themselves (“Say you wanna get sober / And I say I’d like to see you try”), balancing sharp poignancy and dry comedy as we watch the wheels start to come off a relationship in real time. Likewise, The Actor describes a romantic cycle of closeness and chaos (“afternoon f..king and a fight”) that feels like a messy yet requisite rite of passage. And on the tellingly titled That’s All She Wrote, there’s a whole lot of feeling freighted to this simple line: “You’re right here with me, but I feel so alone.” Yes, the travails of young coupling are a running theme here, with the a cappella I’ll Find A Way (To Carry It All) asking how things got so sour, and Mary’s Playing the Harp unpacking the experience of completing a tour while nursing a broken heart.

“I know that I’m alone when it comes to loving you,” goes a key line in Moth Song, which finds strength in the trio’s vocal solidarity as strings add quiet drama in the backdrop. And on Cathode Ray, which evokes the campfire Americana of Harvest-era Neil Young, we’re reminded why we go through these harrowing rituals of courtship: “Everybody needs somebody to make their body come undone.” Thanks in part to New Zealand producer Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams), the band’s instrumentation is so sparse and curated that open space seems woven into the fabric of the record. That means when drums or electric guitar enter the frame, the effect can be thrilling yet still all too considered and understated. Harmonising is a tender form of delivery by nature, and Folk Bitch Trio’s unvarnished storytelling follows through on that intimacy. Their tightly bonded vocal arrangements are especially rousing on the darkly worded Foreign Bird and the Nick Drake-esque Sarah, with an unhurried groundedness that comes from the three members singing together since high school. For some listeners, this album might double as a sort of support group for mid-20s disappointment, past or present. Folk Bitch Trio definitely strikes a chord with its confiding lyrics and vocals alike, and that feat has already seen the band embark on tours of both North America and Europe. Now Would Be a Good Time is also being released on Jagjaguwar, the US indie label that introduced the world to Bon Iver, among others. That sudden plunge into the spotlight should provide enough hectic life experience to fuel many more songs to come.

Doug Wallen

 

ELECTRONIC POP

Thee Black Boltz

Tunde Adebimpe

Sub Pop

★★★★

Apparently Tunde Adebimpe made a sonic mood board while writing his debut solo album. It included Fever Ray, Bjork, Suicide and Grace Jones. The 49-year-old was inspired by the mixtapes he used to exchange with friends in his youth, mismatched tracks that somehow made a coherent statement. While his band, TV On the Radio, melds indie rock and electronica in a visceral way, Adebimpe leans further towards the latter here, his supple voice shapeshifting from track to track while maintaining a DIY attitude that imbues the bleeps and bloops with life. Magnetic has a rattling Krautrock rhythm and roiling synths, with Adebimpe performing a rollercoaster of a vocal, singing “I was thinking about the human race in the age of tenderness and rage”. He has gone for variety rather than uniformity – God Knows rides on a dry, snappy beat and features pedal steel; The Most melds Yazoo-style keys with a sample of a 1985 dancehall track; ILY is mainly finger-picked acoustic guitar, a heartfelt ode to Adebimpe’s sister, who died at the age of 41 during Covid. Many moods, but a singular voice.

Barry Divola

 

METAL/CLASSICAL

Insatiable

Divide and Dissolve

Bella Union

★★★★

Five albums in, Takiaya Reed’s unlikely mingling of doom metal and classical motifs is still all too effective. US-born and now Melbourne-based, Reed feeds both her guitar and soprano saxophone through transformative effects while alternately carving out space with shuddering density and dreamy lightness. Throbbing bass and charred distortion help to create music as cathartic as it is concussive. Though Divide and Dissolve is largely instrumental, Reed makes her vocal debut on Grief, a track that’s appropriately ghostly in tone. Monolithic is an ideal introduction for newcomers, sounding like a stately recital that’s been ambushed by a bulldozer. And as the deep churn of Disintegrate grows subtly slower as it progresses, the effect is downright entrancing. A Black and Cherokee woman, Reed draws inspiration from the drive for Indigenous sovereignty and decolonisation, adding mournful subtext to these often portentous compositions. But for all the heaviness in the music and themes alike, there’s enough dynamic variety to guide along listeners who have never engaged with doom metal.

Doug Wallen

 

BLUES ROCK

Paper Doll

Samantha Fish

Rounder Records

★★★★

This is the record that should break American singer/guitarist Samantha Fish in a big way. Recorded between dates on a recent US tour, Paper Doll benefits hugely from the live energy then coursing through Fish and her three-piece band, augmented here by a gun trio of backing vocalists. As much riff-rock as blues-rock, its nine tracks range from the Angus Young-influenced Can Ya Handle the Heat, through the two-part Fortune Teller – which starts slow and swampy, then breaks into a full-blown rave-up – until climaxing with the punkish Rusty Razor and the title track, on which Fish’s guitar closely shadows her voice. She’s in fine vocal fettle throughout, channelling Grace Slick on Fortune Teller (an original, not the much-covered ‘60s pop classic) and waxing soulful on a brace of ballads, Off In the Blue and the closing Don’t Say It. As for her guitar skills, she rarely allows them to crowd the songs, though epic solos on Sweet Southern Sound, the back end of Fortune Teller and Can Ya Handle the Heat beg to differ. It’s significant that Fish’s mission statement is set out in the opening track, I’m Done Runnin’: “The past has come undone but I like where I’m goin’ / I know I’m changin’, changin’ / Watch me go.”

Phil Stafford

 

GLAM ROCK/HEAVY METAL

Skeleta

Ghost

Loma Vista Recordings

★★★

Andrew Lloyd Webber seemingly couldn’t put a foot wrong at the start of his career. His first two major musicals — Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and Jesus Christ Superstar — earned critical acclaim. But then his run abruptly ended with Jeeves, a disastrous flop that brought the musical writer crashing back to earth. For Swedish band Ghost, Skeleta certainly isn’t a disaster; the Van Halen 5150-era sounding Cenotaph and the old school rockers Satanized and Lachryma are likely to become setlist staples for years to come. But it isn’t on the same level as its back catalogue. Where 2022’s Impera saw the band leap into arenas, armed with stadium-sized hooks and all manner of pantomime theatrics, this album’s opener Peacefield sounds almost out of breath, while De Profundis Borealis threatens to be a truly great power ballad before suddenly petering out. The big problem with Skeleta is that it offers sanitised, studio presentations of songs intended to be experienced live. Case in point is the shredding battle between guitar and synth in Umbra – a moment that will thrill on stage, but wastes time on earphones. After Jeeves, Webber wrote Evita – another great triumph. One hopes Ghost leader Tobias Forge is capable of a similar follow-up.

Alasdair Belling