FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Hatchie - Keepsake
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FOR this outing…
PHOTO CREDIT: Joe Agius
of Revisiting…, I wanted to spend a bit of time with one of the best albums of 2019. Hatchie (Harriette Pilbeam) released the fantastic Keepsake on 21st June, 2019. Her debut album, I don’t feel it is talked about enough now. She put out the incredible Giving the World Away last year – again, another album that you do not hear much about. The reason I want to focus on Keepsake, is because it is so strong. Such an individual and magnificent debut! I might have heard a couple of songs from the album when the album came out but, almost four years later, it is rare that you hear stuff from it played on the radio. It is an album that I would urge people to seek out and hear. Before I come to a couple of the positive reviews for Keepsake, there is an interview from Rolling Stone that I wanted to drop in. It seems that inspiration was not instantly forthcoming. One song and idea lit a fuse that led to the album being created:
“HARRIETTE PILBEAM WAS struggling to write songs for her new album when, one day last year, she suddenly had an idea.
“I was like, ‘I want to write a song that’s super simple, really repetitive, just a straight-up compressed New Order pop song,’” says the singer-songwriter better known as Hatchie. “And that’s what happened.”
The result, “Obsessed,” is a riff-driven highlight off Keepsake, Hatchie’s thrilling new debut. The album arrives a year after the sugar-rush pop of Sugar & Spice, an EP that introduced her as a songwriter with a preternatural knack for earworm melodies and swooping hooks. During the past year, she’s opened for everyone from Kylie Minogue to Snail Mail, a testament to her ability to present as pop, indie, or electronic, depending on the setting.
On Keepsake, Hatchie widens both her emotional and musical palette, exploring darker territory and flirting with a harsh industrial sound on songs like “Without a Blush.”
During the past year or two, Pilbeam became acutely aware that her music was being viewed primarily as a vehicle for expressing romantic infatuation. Early songs like “Sugar & Spice” and “Sleep” were bright, synth-heavy depictions of the near-delirious early rush of love. “Just come see me in my dreams,” she sang in the latter, “No wonder I’m smiling in my sleep.”
But when she began writing Keepsake, Hathchie knew she wanted to change course.
“As a young woman, I was like, ‘What is this saying about me that all my songs are about this?'” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with that, but I put a lot of pressure on myself to not write about that, which is silly because it’s what everyone writes about.”
At first listen, some of her new songs sound more in line than ever with the type of love fixation Pilbeam was trying to avoid, despite being about other subjects entirely. “Obsessed” chronicles a platonic friendship so intoxicating and intimate it can border on crazed; “Unwanted Guest” is the story of “someone dragging you to a party and being really pissed off and wanting to leave the party,” she says. “So I was like, even if that’s about a guy, it’s not about being infatuated with and at the mercy of a guy,” Pilbeam says. “It’s about being really angry at a guy.”
Pilbeam hails from Brisbane, Australia, and she credits the local indie scene there as playing an instrumental part in her early formation as an artist. “I met all my friends and my boyfriend and all the people in my band through that scene,” she says, but “today, my music feels pretty separate from it.” When she has time at home these days, she prefers to do laundry and hang out with family.
Pilbeam describes her upbringing as stable and drama-free, which, she speculates today, might be the reason why she found herself gravitating toward writing about love and heartbreak early on in her career. “It was just the most emotional thing I’d ever been through,” the 26-year-old says, “because I had kind of had an easy life.”
Some of the best songs on Keepsake make explicit Hatchie’s ongoing process of sorting out the parameters of her own work. “You can call it an obsession/Call it anything you want to,” she sings on the opening standout “Not That Kind.” It’s a line of winking self-awareness for an artist who’s become increasingly aware of the importance of self-definition, even as she’s realized that her creative persona is ever-evolving.
“I feel like I’m changing so much every six months,” says Pilbeam. “Even this new album feels like a past version of myself.” Since the recording of Keepsake, she’s found herself writing unadulterated dance-pop. She enjoys these early stages of writing, before she needs to conceive of her work within the framework of her career to date”.
Hatchie is one of these artists that deserves a lot of love and attention. The Brisbane-born artist followed her 2018 E.P., Sugar & Spice, with an incredible debut album. Keepsake should be revived and played a lot more. It was definitely one of the albums of 2019. A potent and memorable debut from a very special artist. This is what AllMusic wrote in their four-star review for the stunning Keepsake:
“On her debut EP, Sugar & Spice, Hatchie's ultra-catchy take on dream pop was so perfectly realized that it was hard to tell how she could improve -- or expand -- on it. Though her approach isn't as novel as it was before, Harriette Pillbeam's music sounds better than ever on Keepsake. She spends the first half of her debut album showing just how much she can change things up while keeping the honeyed melodies and soaring choruses that are vital to the Hatchie sound. On "Not That Kind," she strips away some of Sugar & Spice's hazy guitars in favor of distorted drums and wide-open spaces that add drama to its candy-coated yearning; later, "Unwanted Guest" proves her music isn't all sweetness and light, with a hefty rhythm section and towering, shimmering riffs providing an unexpected and welcome edge.
On the album's luminous second half, Hatchie returns to the more familiar terrain of Sugar & Spice with the strummy ballads "When I Get Out" and "Kiss the Stars" as well as the irresistible finale "Keep." She also finds new nuances within her blend of dream pop and pop with a capital P -- somehow, "Without a Blush"'s swooning guitars and vocals have as much in common with Curve's "Coast Is Clear" as they do with Taylor Swift's "Wildest Dreams," while "Stay with Me" proves she's as capable of epic emotional climaxes as any chart-topping artist. Throughout Keepsake, Pillbeam develops the flair for pairing widescreen sounds with down-to-earth lyrics that she hinted at on Sugar & Spice. "Obsessed" is a standout, not only for its nagging arpeggiated synth hook, but for the clever way she dismisses her feelings while hinting at how deep they run. By contrast, "Her Own Heart" is unabashedly earnest and, with its clouds of guitars and piles of harmonies, one of the album's prettiest moments. As Hatchie exceeds the expectations set by Sugar & Spice, Keepsake reflects her growth into an even more confident and varied artist”.
I am going to round off with a review from The Line of Best Fit. They awarded it 8.5/10 when they sat down with it. I have been a fan of Hatchie since Keepsake came out in 2019. Her follow-up, Giving the World Away, is another album that people should definitely give some time to. The confident and very distinct debut from Hatchie has lyrics that could readily apply to her and her life - but they also speak to the listener. There is that mix of the universal and personal that makes Keepsake so rich and compelling:
“Reflections of our younger selves grappling with life, winning and losing tiny daily battles. Everyone's past is unique unto themselves but invariably each contains within it some degree of happiness and heartbreak, hard lessons and bad decisions, and often a confidence we forgot we once had. This tunnel to past times is often accompanied by songs, though seldom those of our choosing; nights lost in bars or on dance floors drowning in the current tastes of the time. Hearing these songs can takes us back although more often than not they are not the ones we opt to revisit.
Hatchie makes exactly the type of music that, if we could choose, would be a fitting soundtrack to this nostalgic recollection of our youth. Keepsake, her debut album, revolves around a formative period in her life within which we can hear echoes of our own. It is not just in the message but in the music itself. A trance like ecstasy and optimism grips even the darkest of moments as if to rejoice in the fact that they are in the past and can be moved on from.
Hatchie’s debut EP Sugar & Spice was a robust statement of intent, glistening with washes of indie-pop. Keepsake goes one step beyond. Building on the energy and confidence of that first release we find the Australian flexing her songwriting prowess, carving channels into previously unchartered waters.
Hatchie has from the outset displayed a knowing ability to weave stealthy pop hooks into her sound. This unashamed embrace of big pop moments explodes on opener “Not That Kind” as the vacuum of ‘80s synths and star dusting of disco channels Kylie at her best. The sawing crush of “Without A Blush” pulsates with a rugged heartbeat reminiscent of Chvrches. As the chorus drops there is a palpable surge of strobe lights, throwing light into shaded corners.
As much as there is to love about the straight-up pop songs on Keepsake, it’s the contrast between them and the darker moments that will keep you coming back. The dazzling shoegaze of “Her Own Heart” leaves a lump in the throat as Hatchie sings with reassuring optimism “Stop giving it time / Time waits for none / It’s never too late / But don’t waste a day”. On “Obsessed”, one of the records highlights, a distorted strum of guitar is soon swallowed up in a swarm of synths as it shuffles from baggy Britpop to the jangle pop of Alvvays.
“Secret”, a song about talking to a friend about mental health, feels like just its title; a private, intimate memory. As the song gradually builds from a whisper to its euphoric closing minute it gives shape to the memory of the friends we all needed to lean on at some point.
Adopting a Smashing Pumpkins approach to overdubs the tracks here are layered into towering behemoths. That could be one of the reasons they evoke such a nostalgia. There is a depth and sense of time to the record that absorbs you and draws you closer, stilling time. Periods of reflection often accompany times in our life when something causes us to pause, even for the briefest of moments.
There is often no logic to the memories we collect, why we remember some things so vividly, or why seemingly new experiences remind us of our past. The same is true of music. Keepsake has an inexplicable familiarity even as it bursts with new ideas. It is a document capable of throwing us into our own pasts, the perfect score for the movies we make in our minds”,
A brilliant debut album from Hatchie, Keepsake is one that everyone should hear! Let’s hope that she keeps on putting out wonderful music for years to come. If you have not heard Keepsake, spend a little time out and investigate. It is such a fine debut from…
THE amazing Hatchie.