Canadian artist Housewife announces new EP 'Girl Of The Hour' out March 7th on Submarine Cat Records + releases euphoric new single "Work Song"
NEW EP ‘GIRL OF THE HOUR’, OUT MARCH 7TH THROUGH SUBMARINE CAT RECORDS
PRE-SAVE HERE
"slow-burning, glittery alt-pop "
THE LINE OF BEST FIT
“Housewife is a revelation…A glorious combination of Blondshell, Julia Jacklin and soaring US songwriter charm, it’s an emphatic introduction to an artist already screaming “future favourite”.
DORK
“'Divorce' sees the Toronto-based artist paint a vivid picture of someone whose world has fallen apart due to a break-up, via the mediums of mournful vocals, pensive grunge riffs, and palpable pop hooks.”
DIY MAG
“an addictive alt-pop anthem with shades of nostalgia and melancholia from a promising new talent.”
RECORD OF THE DAY
“ -Child of my own Divorce- That’s the most brilliant lyric I’ve ever heard….The lyrics are incredibly smart.”
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“‘King of Wands’ finds Fry once again showing off their layered songwriting and infectious melodicism, hitting on a careful combination of rollicking indie rock guitars and earworm hooks.”
UNDER THE RADAR MAGAZINE
“Toronto-based rising star Brighid Fry under her musical moniker consistently delivers pop-tinged indie-rock productions that weave through everything from messy situationships to climate change in empowering yet grounding tones.”
EARMILK
After a prolific 2024 with widely-praised releases ‘I Lied’, ‘Wasn’t You’, ‘Life of the Party’ and ‘Divorce’, Canadian artist Housewife (Brighid Fry) is kicking off the New Year with the announcement of eagerly-awaited new EP ‘Girl Of The Hour’ accompanied by the release of new single ‘Work Song’.
Due for release on 7 March via Submarine Cat Records, ‘Girl Of The Hour’ follows 2022’s EP ‘You’ll Be Forgiven’ continuing the sprawling indie-pop energy Housewife has become known for.
New single ‘Work Song’ shines as one of the more anthemic moments on the new collection, broadening her inventive progression once again.
Speaking about the new release, she said, “Work Song is about feeling unsatisfied with yourself and where you’re going. I have really high expectations of myself but also have really unhealthy habits and so oscillate between being a workaholic and being burnt out. I wanted to poke fun at myself, while still processing it as a valid issue in my life. This song is for anyone else out there with executive functioning issues who sometimes feel like a hot mess.”
Filled with curiosity and questions of identity, Toronto’s Brighid Fry (she/ they) makes the sort of indie-leaning, exploratory music that it’s taken several years of early success and subsequent growth to reach. First breaking through in her teens as one half of Moscow Apartment, the duo swiftly won a Canadian Folk Music award for their self-titled debut EP before changing their name and then becoming a solo project in 2022. As Brighid hit her twenties and stepped front and centre, the material that she was writing became increasingly more self-aware and personal, too.
Still only 21, Brighid credits her liberal upbringing as helping to make this process of both artistic and self-discovery as seamless as possible. Having recently been diagnosed as autistic, she jokes that her neurodivergence was on display and understood from the first moments music entered her life as a child when, unlike most three-year-olds, she became obsessed with classical composers and begged her parents not just for a kid’s violin, but also a collection of busts of Bach, Beethoven and co. When the classical music fixation gave way to more contemporary tastes, she would join her family at the folk festivals they regularly attended, playing her first non-classical performance at a Greenpeace fundraiser.
As well as offering Brighid an early introduction to the community that music can provide and the climate activism that would go on to become a big part of her life (in 2021, she helped to set up the Canadian branch of Music Declares Emergency), her family also provided a completely accepting place to explore her wider identity. As a “third generation queer”, she’s felt confident and comfortable with her own bisexuality since the age of 12. “My parents are bisexual; my grandma’s a lesbian; I grew up going to Pride so I never had a teary coming out,” she notes. In the two years since Housewife’s previous EP ‘You’ll Be Forgiven’, meanwhile, Brighid has spent time understanding that she is non-binary. “It took longer to figure that bit out, but I’ve never struggled with my identity,” she says.
On new EP ‘Girl Of The Hour’, then, Housewife is addressing these facets more than ever - be that on the friend crush dilemma of first single ‘I Lied’ or the musings on social perceptions that run through ‘Life of the Party’. But although these six tracks of earworm grunge-pop are a real time document of an artist growing and changing - figuring out some vital parts of themself along the way - the predominant vibe is one that’s playful and inquisitive. “Sometimes your friends are hot and that can get more complicated when there are no hard lines on what you are,” Brighid suggests. “That’s how my queerness ends up coming out in my music.”
‘Wasn’t You’ laces fuzzy guitars with a relatable tale about fancying someone you wish you didn’t. “My problem with being bisexual isn’t about being attracted to women, it’s being attracted to men,” Brighid laughs - an idea intertwined with an acute awareness of the gender imbalance of prospective partners who “have been raised and socialised in a completely different way than me, and don’t have to deal with sexism and misogyny in the same way I do.”
On the aforementioned ‘I Lied’, she addresses another hurdle of being bisexual over the sort of buoyant indie-pop that nods to fellow queer heroes MUNA. “I’m always interested in this idea that straight men and women can’t be friends, or that you can’t be friends with someone you could be attracted to,” Brighid notes, “because if you’re bi then well, shit! Can’t I have any friends?!” Meanwhile, for the melancholy heartbreak of ‘Divorce’, Brighid sought out fellow songwriter Hank Compton during a writing session in order to make “the most devastating shit” they could.
Largely moving away from the lighter folk of her early output and leaning into the more alternative influences that have been part of her life since attending a formative Girls Rock camp aged eight, ‘Life of the Party’ fuses pop hooks with a grungey, cathartic musicality; a duality that fits the song perfectly. “People don’t pick up on the fact that I’m autistic automatically so they’ll think I'm this aloof, weird bitch,” Brighid says. “But then people also assume I’m this confident person who knows what they’re doing [because of my career]. I wanted to write a song about all these misconceptions about me and how hard it is to set people straight. People see me on stage and think that’s me, but it just never has been.”
‘Matilda’ is a song about losing her bike that’s also, of course, not just about losing her bike. “It’s about the aspect of needing to move on and dealing with loss that was informed by this other big loss in my life. But,” she notes, “I genuinely cried when I lost that bike.” Meanwhile ‘Work Song’ - written with regular collaborator and Juno award winner, Derek Hoffman - takes an upbeat, glass-half-full approach to self improvement, morphing dissatisfaction into a pop about getting better, both as a performer and a person.
On ‘Girl Of The Hour’, Brighid is fully leaning into the fresh territory she’s opened up as Housewife - from the newly limitless genre scope she’s allowing herself to explore to the increasingly personal, nuanced and curious topics that permeate the lyrics within them. More than ever, Brighid Fry knows herself and the result is a project that’s getting more confident in the idiosyncrasies of its own skin by the day. “Some people say that this music is political or it has very strong messaging and I think that’s great,” she says, “but really for me, it’s just a way to process life.”
Girl Of The Hour EP track listing:
I Lied
Work Song
Life Of The Party
Matilda
Divorce
Wasn’t You
DISCOVER HOUSEWIFE
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