Little Quirks are playing the National Folk Festival in Canberra over the Easter weekend.
The NSW trio have done a bunch of festival gigs of late including the Port Fairy Folk Festival and the Nannup Music Festival.
“We love the festival gigs. They’re our favourite to do,” says guitarist/vocalist Abbey Toole. “The vibe there is awesome and there’s so many diverse acts and we do learn a lot every time we do a festival. The atmosphere of it is the best part.”
The National Folk Festival’s lineup features folk acts from Scotland to Japan as well as Australian icons John Schumann and Shane Howard and genre outlaws like Freya Josephine Hollick.
While folk-oriented, Little Quirks’ music incorporates influences from indie rock and pop in a similar manner to artists like First Aid Kit, Fleet Foxes and The Cranberries.
“We definitely go with the folk, but we do a dash of a lot of genres,” Toole says. “It’s really interesting listening to the traditional folk stuff. It’s awesome and we do have some songs that are like that, but then we have some songs that are completely different.
“That’s the cool thing about these kinds of festivals – there’s so many levels of folk and so many areas of folk.”
Little Quirks is made up of Abbey, her sister Mia on drums and their cousin Jaymi Toole on mandolin. They’ve been playing together as Little Quirks for five years, but music has always been a part of the trio’s lives.
“Because we grew up in a very musical family we’ve always been exposed to The Beatles and Queen and Led Zeppelin, so we had a broad range of things to go off,” Abbey says. “We listened to all the old school stuff. Obviously we strayed from that, but we still take bits and pieces of those influences.”
Little Quirks’ current sound is largely informed by a selection of big name contemporary artists.
“Through our teenage years we got into Mumford & Sons and First Aid Kit and The Lumineers and they’re major influences now in the way we sound,” Abbey says. “We like a broad range of things. That’s the cool thing about being able to write – you do get to change it up all the time.
“I try and write differently all the time. A lot of the time I do sit there and go, ‘Yeah I want this one to be a bit peppier’, and I’ll try and do that. But sometimes I’m completely off and I go into a completely different direction.”
There have been a number of bands to feature siblings throughout music history, for better or for worse. Tegan and Sara is an example of a harmonious sibling relationship while Oasis is the polar opposite. Abbey sees the family connection as a creative asset.
“There’s a different relationship that you can’t really replicate unless you are family,” she says. “Having that kind of relationship with each other, it does make [Little Quirks] different. It’s great playing with family – it’s so easy and we have such a great time doing it.”
In 2016, Little Quirks released their debut EP, Where We Hide, followed by Suzie Knows in 2017. 2018 brought the singles ‘Crumbled’ and ‘I Told You So’, the former gaining favourable triple j airplay and racking up the streaming numbers. There’s more to come in the second half of 2019.
“We’re actually recording our brand new EP [this month] and we’re so excited to do that. We’ve learnt new things and it’ll be an accurate representation of what we’re doing now. When listening back to Suzie Knows and Where We Hide, there is such a big difference now. We’re so excited and we’ll be releasing that later in the year.
“We’re playing most of the EP at the [National Folk Festival]. So they’re unreleased, but we’ll be playing it there.”
Little Quirks come to the National Folk Festival from Thursday April 18 to Monday April 22 at Exhibition Park in Canberra. Head to the festival website for lineup information and for tickets.
