Electro Folk brigand Frankie Archer brings four songs on a theme to her ever expanding repertoire.

Release Date: 4th October 2024

Label: Bandcamp

Format: digital / CD

Almost a year on from Never So Red EP the much decorated and revered Frankie Archer makes her latest bold statement. The Radio 2/Radio 6 fave and winner of 2023 Christian Raphael Prize who’s also starred on the Jools Holland show, has a series of upcoming dates as personally invited guest of The Last Dinner Party as well as her own October/November UK headline tour.

stories of four women and girls

We’ve had several encounters of late including the 2024 Cambridge Folk Festival where her unique and eyebrow raising take on ‘folk’ is as starling as the image that adorns the EP. The theme of the four song EP is equally uncompromising. Pressure And Persuasion tells the stories of four women and girls from centuries past who navigate the same expectations that are put on women today. Be it then or now, the songs encompass joy, bravery, defiance and helplessness, and challenges ideas about how womens’ stories are told and perceived.

“Pressures to behave, to speak, to look a certain way, ” she explains. To be attractive but not try too hard. To be chatty but not too opinionated. To be sexy but not a slut. To say ‘thank you’ to a creepy advance because it’s just a compliment. To smile when a man tells her to – because women shouldn’t look miserable, god forbid angry. To marry the right person. To support a man. To be a mother. To give their body in exchange for flattery and gifts. To be persuaded after saying ‘no’ because women should be nice and agreeable.”

a typically broad sonic pallet

As you’d maybe expect from Frankie Archer, the sonic pallet is typically broad – “from feminist trad-pop to doom-folk to treacle-bop” she says – with each song built around the bare bones of the traditional words and melody. An assortment of synths, drum tracks and heavily treated (some might say butchered, yet butchery is an art in itself) vocal and fiddle snaps are manipulated, shifted, distorted and delayed, often in cavalier fashion.

Much credit for the experimentation and boundary shifting must/may (?) lie with Jim Moray. Himself no stranger to subverting the form, you can imagine him egging her on at moments when a wise and experienced head is needed and decisions to be made.

the songs

Barbara Allen might be one of the most covered, re-told and interpreted songs in the tradition, but that’s nothing more than a challenge to Frankie Archer. A chilling little vocal parts sit on the shoulder and whispers how lechery is not a compliment. In contemporary terms, not dissimilar to something you;d find on an album by Elbow in the ever so slightly discordant synth lines and the descending “I don’t owe you anything” vocal line.

Combining evocative and achingly morose fiddle lines with a distorted beat and ethereal textures, Lovely Joan (covered by Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage on Ink Of The Rosy Morning) evokes thoughts of stranger danger, yet with an ending that shows our hero(ine) twisting expectations to her own end.

Fair Mabel Of Wallington Hall is given some electronic vocal treatments against a distant drone. Stark and sparse, befitting the tale, which may be the pick of the four. Misery, death in childbirth and a general air of despondency – all ingredients that make some folk songs so compelling. What James Findlay has called “a gynaecological nightmare!” Frankie gives the chilling narrative the most minimal of tuneage while the tragedies play out. Totally ghastly, not he stuff of horrible histories, but marvellous stuff!

The Tyneside ditty of Elise Marley veers towards the more traditional. ie, there’s a fiddle part that complements the swing of the sing song arrangement and minimal electronic percussion. She’s maybe the most heroic and legendary of the characters who populate Pressure And Persuasion and one who might be less averse to both pressure and persuasion. Deserving of a more robust tune and ending the sequnec of somehting that could be intimated as a high, kudos to Frankie for highlighting the themes and providing them with a new coat of reflective soundtracks.

Here’s Elsie Marley – which must have been a fun shoot…:

Frankie Archer online: Official Website / Facebook/ Instagram / X (formerly Twitter) / TikTok / YouTube / Bandcamp

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