It’s two years since CONNECTIVITY (2021) smashed into the top 40 and debuted at #1 in the UK download chart, propelling the fiercely independent voice of GRACE PETRIE from critics’ choice to the main stages of major festivals across The UK and Ireland, Australia and Canada.

For a seasoned road dog who spent almost 15 years clocking up tours with the likes of Billy Bragg, Frank Turner and Hannah Gadsby, the COVID lockdowns were like a cage for Petrie and when restrictions lifted, she hit the road harder than ever, armed with her most searing and successful record to date, and determined to make up for lost time. Sell-out headline tours across the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand followed, with audiences from Melbourne to Toronto mesmerised by the ferocity of her socially urgent lyricism and the barnstorming power of her live show. But travelling the globe hasn’t diminished her laser focus on the political issues plaguing the UK, with two more Prime Ministers, endless blunders and evermore division seen since she last swapped microphone for pen and paper.

Now the songwriter is back - stronger, older and a whole lot angrier than ever before. As right wing ideologues trade in suspicion and cynicism, tearing communities apart against a backdrop of crumbling public services, the ordinary folk of Britain continue to suffer the consequences of corruption and individualism.

From within this maelstrom of despair comes BUILD SOMETHING BETTER - the new, uncontainable album from Grace Petrie.

Recorded raw and unflinchingly with folk-punk legend Frank Turner in the producer’s seat, BUILD SOMETHING BETTER is a return to blistering protest form for Britain’s most relevant political songwriter, a decade after being hailed as “a powerful new voice”, (The Guardian) and “a millennial’s Billy Bragg” (Huffington Post). In a world that seems to make less sense than ever, these are songs made to both holler along to from the crowd barrier and to tear up with on a lonely latet night train. A record for everyone whose broken heart beats for, and whose boots stomp in time with, the hope a brighter tomorrow.

“An effervescent charm-bomb of a performer” - The New Yorker.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Best Country In The World
2. The House Always Wins
3. King And Country
4. Meanwhile In Texas
5. Next Episode Starts
6. Start Again
7. Earthwire
8. Cynicism Free
9. If I Were To Outlive You
10. English Culture
11. Fixer Upper

More than a decade after first emerging as the voice of a generation in Tory Britain, Grace Petrie stands out as one the most important songwriters working in the UK today. Exploding onto the folk scene in 2010 with the low-fi acoustic guitar/vocal release Tell Me a Story, Petrie quickly attracted attention with her polemical folk anthems, acerbic lyricism and open-hearted performance style. Support slots for the likes of Billy Bragg and Emmy the Great soon followed, with the Guardian declaring her “a powerful new songwriting voice”. The 2010s were spent relentlessly touring and, responding to the evermore dramatic political landscape, Petrie released five DIY albums of protest music in seven years. But it was the 2018 release of Queer As Folk which catapulted Petrie from cult status to mainstream attention. Both in production and songwriting, the record was a clear graduation, with rave reviews across the folk press calling it ‘probably the most intelligently crafted album you’ll hear this year - ****’ (R2) and commenting, ‘she’s the urgent, pulsing, compassionate talent this world desperately needs’ (The Observer). Lead single Black Tie, a tender reflection on growing up queer and framed as a tear-jerking letter to her teenage self about the happier future that lies ahead, has deservedly become an anthem for queer audiences of all ages, with over 150K views on Youtube and over 600K streams on Spotify alone. The New Yorker gave a glowing live review that hailed Black Tie as ‘a new gay anthem’, and Petrie as ‘a sort of butch lesbian Billy Bragg’. UK festivals from Cambridge Folk to Glastonbury’s prestigious Acoustic Stage recognised her as a top flight artist and her debut Australian tour in Spring 2020 culminated in sold-out shows in Melbourne and Sydney. …It was all going so well! The coronavirus reached Sydney just as Petrie’s tour did and, after a mad dash for an early flight home, she spent the next year and a half - the longest period of her adult life - in one place, unable to commune with others through music in the way that was innate to her since childhood. From out of this chaos comes “Connectivity”, an album built from the reflections of what humanity means in a world struggling against division and destruction. Glued to one place for the first time, this is a record made firmly out of Petrie’s comfort zone: slowly, intricately, and over many close-up, painstaking months: the audience and all its comfort stripped away, and the songwriter that lies beneath the performer exposed. The result is the most honest collection of songs she has ever shared. It promises to be Petrie’s most personal - and yet most universal - album to date. ‘She offers hope and solidarity, born out of absolute conviction and with no trace of empty sloganeering….this wake-up call is one to be both welcomed and wholeheartedly embraced.’

TRACK LISTING

1. Storm To Weather
2. We’ve Got An Office In Hackney
3. Great Central Way
4. No Woman Ever Wants To Be A Muse
5. The Last Man On Earth
6. Galway
7. Romance Addict
8. Haul Away
9. Technicolor
10. IKEA
11. Some Days Are Worse Than Others
12. The Losing Side