Grace Petrie’s New Album, Connectivity, Is a Queer, Folksy Delight

In the space of less than a year, I’ve gone from hearing Grace Petrie’s delightfully queer folk music for the first time on YouTube to making a Bandcamp account specifically to preorder her latest album, Connectivity. It had been years since I last purchased music—I tend to rely on the free versions of Spotify and YouTube for everything that isn’t loaded onto the iPod I got in 2013—but Petrie has quickly become my favorite artist out there, and I wanted to support the first album she’s put out since I got into her music. Having had it for a while now (it came out on October 4 in Britain, which meant I first heard it before I went to bed on October 3 in Minneapolis), I can definitively say it’s one of the best purchases of any kind I’ve made in a while.

Grace Petrie

Petrie’s music comes in several flavors: she has plenty of songs about pining, love, and breakups, like most artists, but she also has a lot of songs about politics, queerness, and being a musician. As much as I enjoy her songs about relationships (and I definitely do), her political songs tend to be my favorites. She’s an unashamed leftist who regularly criticizes the government of the UK, where she lives, sometimes getting more specific than I can really follow, but a lot of issues unfortunately cross the pond—I can often relate to her songs decrying conservative economic policies and bigotry against the queer community, among other topics.

All that said, the songs on Connectivity are proving harder for me to fit neatly into boxes than songs of hers I’ve known from previous albums. This is an introspective album, but not in a way that makes it navel-gazing. Rather, Petrie uses her own experiences, like writing love songs (“No Woman Ever Wants to Be a Muse”) and getting her start in the music business (“We’ve Got an Office in Hackney”) to make larger social points about the way women and “outsiders” are treated (and often exploited), particularly by the music industry.

The album is full of standouts, ranging from big-band sounds on tracks like “Great Central Way” and “The Last Man on Earth” to a thoroughly impressive, intimate a cappella performance on “Galway.” On the whole, I tend to prefer Petrie’s high-energy songs, and those are mostly concentrated on the first two-thirds of the album, but my favorite is the very last track, “The Losing Side.” It’s not as sad as the title makes it sound; it’s about how even if the causes of justice and equality don’t win out in Petrie’s lifetime, she has faith that they’ll emerge victorious eventually. I try to sing along with the chorus, but I tend to choke up by the end, because (as usual) she is giving me the hope and fire I need to keep up the fight.

Petrie’s music isn’t for everyone, and honestly I think I’d like it a lot less if it were. She’s not aiming to please everybody at the expense of being true to herself, and it shows. You’ll probably enjoy her music the most if you share her leftist politics and can relate to her experiences as a queer person—and it would help if you like folk music. If that’s you, then this album is absolutely worth a listen.

Connectivity is available for sale on Bandcamp and Apple Music. Most of the album is not currently available on Spotify.