Almost all of Hatchie’s music could slot frictionlessly into a coming-of-age film. Her songs, mostly, are misty-eyed ruminations on puppy love and its ensuing devastation; they yearn for a redamancy that feels both fated and vexingly out of reach. You can imagine Harriette Pilbeam’s mille-feuille harmonies soundtracking a high school prom dappled with a disco ball’s refractive glimmer, or picture her fleecy guitars over a montage of light teenage debauchery. These are tracks prefabbed for telegraphing big feelings; everyone knows the outsize melodrama of a first, second or 20th crush.
Liquorice, the title of Pilbeam’s potent third album, winks at her 2018 breakout EP, Sugar and Spice. That formative work was a candy blast of dreampop, emphasis on pop – indebted as much to Carly Rae Jepsen as Cocteau Twins, whose co-founder Robin Guthrie ended up providing a remix of Pilbeam’s single Sure. Liquorice, meanwhile, is more mature and less immediately palatable, eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of Pilbeam’s earlier work.
