By
Harvey James
Photography by
Landon McMahon
Styling by
Lindsay Grosswendt

Hair by Shin Arima at Frank Reps. Makeup by Misha Shahzada at Forward Artists. Photographer’s assistants: Zane Shaffer and Daniel Fry. Digital technician: Willy Lukaitis. Shot at Slate Studios, New York.

Hatchie Writes Her Name in the Shoegaze Canon


“I’m such a thinker,” says Harriette Pilbeam, the Australian shoegaze prodigy who performs under the name Hatchie. “I think about doing things and I talk about doing them, but I don’t really do them.” This assertion seems odd coming from someone who in just two hectic years went from being a student making coffees for extra cash to an internationally acclaimed artist who has had her songs remixed by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins and supported Snail Mail and Girlpool—not to mention having written her recently released début album Keepsake. Contrary to what she says, she has been “doing things.”

Hatchie is part of a wave of preternaturally cool, female-fronted guitar bands, emerging with the likes of Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, and the Japanese House. The lure of Hatchie’s sound, as with the genre at large, is in its lackadaisical and subtle qualities. It floats along, drifting in and out of lyrics, but then a line or a melody or a guitar part will command attention. Her droning, ethereal vocals lie thick over a laidback amalgam of Nineties-inspired shoegaze rock and melancholic dream pop. The result is simple and echoey and will lull listeners into a state of semi-cognizant, warm fuzz.

The 26-year-old seems to have good fortune fall down on her like rain in monsoon season. Earlier this year, for example, while Hatchie was on tour supporting Girlpool for a few months across America, Pilbeam and her band undertook two fifteen-hour days of driving, ending the first day “driving through the snow in the middle of the night up a mountain,” she recalls. Being from Brisbane, it was also her first time driving on the right-hand side of the road. Not only did they survive, but when they woke up in the morning, they were surrounded by the most beautiful, visceral landscape of deep vistas and snowy peaks. “That was, weirdly,” she admits, “my favorite point” of the tour.

But if luck has been on her side in Pilbeam’s touring career, it was good, old-fashioned talent that first set it in motion. When we spoke in May, it was almost two years to the day, her twenty-fourth birthday, that she put “Try” on the triple j Unearthed uploader, a talent scouting program for Australia’s national youth radio station. The next day it was one of the most listened to tracks on the site. The song has a distant feel to it, spacey pop-rock with instant appeal, and was the first song publicly released under the Hatchie alias.

Shirt by Polo Ralph Lauren.

Before it became a runaway success, however, “Try” was purely a description of her frustrating situation at the time. “I was unhappy in a lot of aspects of my life, like work. I was studying in university, I moved house, and all my friendship groups were changing, all this stuff was happening,” Pilbeam recalls. “I had [Hatchie] in the back of my mind for a year or two while sorting all these other things. I’d been in other bands and I wasn’t fully fulfilled. I had been playing around with a new electric guitar I got when I was twenty-one and I wrote the song ‘Try’ on it. It just clicked. I wrote a few other songs around the same time and they felt really exciting to me, so that was when I felt I was finally ready to start on a new project with a fresh sound.”

The long-gestating birth of Hatchie was a natural development for someone who grew up surrounded by music. “My parents are music lovers and they worked in radio,” Pilbeam explains. “I’m the youngest of four kids and we all played music growing up—in bands, in choirs—and my mum would make us all sing together at family stuff.” As she says, “it made sense that one of us would become a musician in some way or another.”

After “Try” took off, record labels and management began reaching out to the Brisbane-born musician. She signed and put out the EP Sugar & Spice in May 2018, a record that entrenched her definitive jangling sound. She received floods of praise online, with one review from the YouTube channel Mr. Deejays Buzz Box in particular so sincerely reverential it even brought her to tears. Then one of her longtime idols, Cocteau Twins’s Robin Guthrie, got in touch to remix her track “Sure”—further confirmation of more general industry approval. “I’m surprised by how much I still like those songs because my opinions change pretty quickly,” Pilbeam says of her first EP. “I think something I’ve written or I’ve done is naff when I look back usually. This is one thing that I’m really happy with still.”

All clothing by Nomia.

Off the back of the EP came a short United States tour last September supporting the irrepressible Lindsey Jordan from Snail Mail, who apparently made Pilbeam aware of their six-year age difference because “she’s so fun, full of energy, and hilarious,” and then, last month, what would be a crowning moment of a new band ten years previous: the release of her début album.

“Without a Blush” was the first insight into the new record. It is immediately telling and a clear departure from the Hatchie of the EP. Just one year later, the sound is far more nuanced, mature, and enjoyable. The bludgeoning guitar parts take a more jarring role, while the vocals are sweet and light. The sunny positivity of the track is suggested but eclipsed by something darker.

The slight stylistic shift on the record came, in part, out of Pilbeam’s personal creative anxiety. “I felt like my bass lines were all really boring and just following the chord structure,” she explains. “So I thought, ‘Why don’t I start a song with the bass?’ because I’d never really done that before.” This admission reveals a bright artist whose awareness of her limitations only push her beyond them to more intricate and gripping songs; it’s a refreshing antithesis to those who believe in their own innate brilliance.

While recording “Without a Blush,” there was a computer malfunction. “The file crashed a few times and I lost the first take,” she recalls, “but it was a blessing in disguise because it made me start it again with a much simpler, more straightforward idea for it.” It seems characteristic of Pilbeam that even the messianic whims of a computer trying to wrestle back control are no match for her unfettered enthusiasm. Her affable, friendly outlook turns everything into a master class in serendipity—or at least seeing and valuing that serendipity.

All clothing by Nomia. Necklace by Melissa Joy Manning.

Hatchie’s most recent single, “Stay With Me,” while not quite depressing, certainly lacks the blind optimism of other songs. Imagine if Underworld’s “Born Slippy” was filtered through a Californian sunset, resulting in a sort of melancholic, pleading dance elegy to the “good times.” The sound drips with ethereal synth over a wall of effortless vocals. “Joe started writing that song,” Pilbeam says, identifying the silent, guiding light behind the band. Joe helps produce, does all the videos and set design, and initially helped record the demo properly. He is also Pilbeam’s boyfriend, flipping on its head the old adage of there being a strong woman behind every great man.

Pilbeam often goes to Joe for songwriting advice and collaboration, but this time she confesses, “It’s mainly his song and I helped him finish it. We were writing it for fun one afternoon when we were bored. I didn’t see it as becoming a Hatchie song, so we were like, ‘Let’s just imagine it’s for like a popstar,’ like Kylie Minogue or King Princess.” These are not references picked out of a hat; her first MP3 player was filled entirely with Kylie Minogue songs and her continuing love of and influence from pop music gives Pilbeam her broad appeal.

With her album out, Pilbeam’s future is a yellow brick road paved with tour dates. It is relentless. “I think I know where I’m going to be every day until the end of September,” she says. “It’s weird, but it’s kind of good—I like knowing.” Knowledge is security, while uncertainty can transpire into the absurd discomfort of an existential crisis. Music is not certain for even its key players, something Pilbeam isn’t immune to. “This album is a stepping stone into whatever else I do in the future because I’m really not sure where this project will be in two or five more years,” she adds, “and I really want to keep every option open.” But with each new and more nuanced romantic, sunshine-dappled grunge tune that’s released, the rising queen of dream pop further writes her name into the shoegaze canon for good.

From top: All clothing and shoes by Nomia. Earrings and necklace by Odette New York. Rings by IO Collective and Mindi Mov.Top by Nomia. Vintage trousers by Balenciaga from Albright Fashion Library. Necklace by Odette New York.Shirt by Polo Ralph Lauren.





By
Harvey James
Photography by
Landon McMahon
Styling by
Lindsay Grosswendt

Hair by Shin Arima at Frank Reps. Makeup by Misha Shahzada at Forward Artists. Photographer’s assistants: Zane Shaffer and Daniel Fry. Digital technician: Willy Lukaitis. Shot at Slate Studios, New York.

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