Australian Artists to Keep Your Folklore Binge Flowing
In a group chat the other day a friend stated, ‘honestly between Folklore, Punisher and Fetch the Bolt cutters it’s been a good year to be a sad middle-class white woman.’ An inspired take and silver lining to a devastatingly dire year.
As brilliant as each of those respective albums are, you don’t need to look so far ashore for your hit of brilliantly crafted folk songs. Australia is brimming with songwriters who will sing directly to you heart and give you reason to shine when you’ve hit repeat on Taylor one time too many. Here is a list to see you through the rest of the year. Full of songs that will make you feel full of life, sorrow, happiness and hope.
Hannah Blackburn
I first heard Hannah Blackburn back in 2012, when helping book a small café gig in the inner north of Canberra. If you’d asked me a week after that show who my favourite songwriter in the country was, I’d have probably said Hannah Blackburn, if you ask me that question today chances are, I’ll say Hannah Blackburn. Hannah has a subtly, warmth and beauty to everything she produces. Songs that are deceptive in their depth, full of flourishes and moments that will break you.
Ruby Gill
Let us get this out of the gates strong. Ruby Gill’s ‘Your Mum’ is easily in my top ten songs released in my lifetime. With a voice that is bold, bright, and bigger than blue whale in a bathtub, Ruby Gill possesses a brilliance that will instantly floor you. A combination of some of the most honestly relatable moments in music and an untouchable intelligence for restraint and release makes Ruby Gill truly remarkable.
Georgia Marley
For the last year, whenever the best of the Inner West Sydney scene conversation has come up, Georgia Marley’s name has been front and centre. An earnest songwriter who pulls immediate and all-encompassing imagery out of the mundane, elevating it to poignant turns of language that make the everyday seem extraordinarly lush. From $4 bottles of Gossips to kisses between the eyebrows, Georgia Marley finds something simple and makes it stay with you.
D’Arcy Spiller
Rawness and etherealness intertwine through D’Arcy Spiller’s music. Combined with an undeniable voice that is immediately D’Arcy Spiller, her songs will plant themselves in your mind and refuse to leave until they are all you want to listen to. Spiller’s music is an incredible craft that creeps up on you, with choral choruses, layers of instrumentation and sophistication in bunches; the music of D’Arcy Spiller is something to behold.
Hope Wilkins
Few songwriters know how to soar quite like Hope Wilkins. Her songs hold you close and draw you into them with an intimacy that makes them instantly personable. This intimacy is leveraged and weaponised when Hope hits you for six in one of her distinctive and defining breakdowns. Turning warm indie folk songs into stadium filling anthems akin to Mumford & Sons or Frightened Rabbit. It is a phenomenal skill that is wielded in a way that makes Hope Wilkins’ music truly glow.
