It’s time to make things plain. Frankie Archer is not just the most exciting thing to happen to folk music for years (although she is), she is one of the most exciting artists in any genre right now. You can call it glitch-folk, treacle-bop, tradtronica, or anything else you fancy but this, Archer’s second “proper” EP, is simply brilliant.
Having toured with Baroque feminist-pop superheroes, The Last Dinner Party, impressed on Later…, played Cambridge and Glastonbury and found her way into The Guardian’s One to Watch column, everything seems to be pointing in the right direction for Archer to be the Next Big Thing. If there’s any justice in our world, that’s exactly what she’ll be.
Following on from last year’s Never So Red, Pressure and Persuasion is an EP that stands defiantly with fist raised, toes tapping and a great big smile on its face. There’s bravery and joy in the tales of four different women, from centuries ago, who stand against the contradictions expected of them and the stereotypes hurled at them. Archer takes their stories and updates them, subverts them, gives them agency. She is ably assisted in her endeavours by producer, and fellow musical maverick, Jim Moray.
Barbara Allen [Roud 54, Child 84] is over 300 years old and has been re-told more often than that. Archer, though, paints Allen in the most favourable of lights. No longer the cruel-hearted denier of affection, she becomes a vision of strength and independence, a modern girl who won’t kiss a man just because she’s told to.
If Chris Morris were to re-make his absurdist, nightmare-ish Blue Jam, then Archer would, surely, play a starring role
Frankie Archer’s voice is pop-perfect, light and sweet until the multi-tracks create the buzz and thrum of differing voices. They echo through your head, at times they are your subconscious, at others the omniscient narrator, an uncomfortable contrast set up between the inner and outer worlds. Despite the sparse, ticking beat there’s something unashamedly, gloriously pop about it all. In the same way that Bjork hides all manner of clever things inside a song with a damn good tune, Archer wields a squishy, squelchy 80s synth sound and viciously chopped violins but uses a chorus to tell us that “lechery is not a compliment” and warns that “I didn’t ask for your attention”. This is the very definition of Archer doing things her way.
She is ghostly and whispering on Lovely Joan [Roud 592], her voice, again, sweetly mocking as scrunchy beats and 80s whooshes make way for Archer’s gorgeous, fluid violin playing. This time it is, mainly, left alone, one of few scraps of folk music left unmolested. In the way of contrast, however, its purity becomes even more pure when placed next to synth pop riffs, multi-tracks and aah-aah harmonies. For all of the musical adventuring, however, this is another song that has smart-girl pop at its heart. Joyously, you can almost hear the eye-rolling of the female protagonist as she’s offered a ring for her maidenhead. Archer arches her very modern eyebrow and dismisses another fool from her presence.
Anyone that has seen Frankie Archer live recently, will recognise the crackle and hiss of vinyl that heralds Fair Mabel of Wallington Hall [Roud 59, Child 91]. An unsettling story has its atmospherics built by scratchy electronics and more multi-tracked voices. Here her voice is distorted, stretched, slowed; sometimes she plays the male of the story, at others she’s the female voice. Sometimes they clash and overlap, sometimes the music becomes so minimal that it’s barely there at all.
If Chris Morris were to re-make his absurdist, nightmare-ish Blue Jam, then Archer would, surely, play a starring role for she is unsettling and spooky, her voice phasing from ear to ear. Then the atmospherics drop away and all we are left with is a crystal clear, wonderful voice, one that flickers like a liturgical candle.
As much as Archer is proudly feminist, she also has a deep and abiding connection with her Northumbrian upbringing. By using dialect and local characters layers of authenticity are created. She describes Elsie Marley [Roud 3065] as a “North East icon”, as a landlady who knows all of the gossip and who knows how to have a good time. Her song is filled with all manner of samples, manipulations and edits, of violins pitched up and glitches stabbing and snatching. It also reverberates with a warming, shuddering bass that envelops and soothes. Tambourine beats and a dancing fiddle skitter and trip around Archer’s beautiful voice as she wonders “d’ y’ ken”. A wonderfully head-nodding finale to a remarkable EP.
It has been a little while since someone who is, largely, from the folk world has crossed over to something a bit more mainstream. With Pressure and Persuasion, Frankie Archer stands on the verge. The debut album can’t be too far away and, if it’s packed with the same invention, the same attitude and the same pop smarts, it’s going to make her a star.
Pressure and Persuasion is out on 4th October and can be purchased from Frankie’s Bandcamp page.
Frankie Archer is touring the UK and Ireland throughout autumn 2024; full list of shows and tickets on her website.
Like this article? Please consider donating to help keep Tradfolk running.
