How Hatchie fell back in love with writing about romance
Australia's dream pop maestro returns to her roots, more confident and assured than ever.
When you’re in love, there are liminal spaces that you can slip in and out of that can feel nothing short of surreal. It’s a light-headed blood rush — places you’re innately familiar with completely transform when you see it through the eyes of someone you adore. At its best, love actualises the aspirational version of yourself: endless reserves of patience, attentiveness, conscientiousness. The mundane becomes thrilling. To occupy love, and be loved, is beautiful.
Harriette Pilbeam understands this better than most of us. The Brisbane-born, Melbourne-based musician is a connoisseur of romance films and has written some of my favourite love songs of the last decade under the pseudonym Hatchie. Her third album Liquorice, releasing November 7, is her latest and most fully realised treatise on love and matters of the heart.
“I wanted to delve deeper into those themes of heartbreak and romance that I started exploring with my early EP and album [2019’s Keepsake]. I felt like there was still a lot I’d left unsaid,” Hatchie tells me over Zoom, dialling in from her home in Melbourne.
Emerging after stints in Brisbane bands Babaganouj and Go Violets, Hatchie started releasing her own music in 2017, and quickly charmed with her catchy hooks and lyrics that captured the in-between feelings of a courtship. She caught the eye of Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, inked a slew of record deals, and became an ascendant indie rock star synonymous with writing world-class love songs.
That reputation served as a gift and a curse. Hatchie confessed to Rolling Stone in 2019 that she put a lot of pressure on herself to avoid writing about romance. She was more explicit in 2022, talking about her album Giving the World Away: “There’s more to me than just writing songs about being in love or being heartbroken.”
“I definitely was really concerned back then with ticking certain boxes and avoiding certain things. I spent so much time setting expectations for myself that I just drove myself crazy. I realised nobody cares this much — at least, not as much as I do,” Hatchie says.
“I tried to let go of all those preconceived concepts and boundaries I’d set for myself this time, and I wasn’t ashamed to write about love and romance. I think younger me thought it wasn’t very feminist to do that, whereas now, yeah, it is such an evergreen topic, and I’ll always have more to say about it.”
Liqourice is proof of concept. It’s gorgeous, light and dreamy, straddling shoegaze and dream pop. Influences like The Cocteau Twins and The Cranberries remain touchstones, but Hatchie continues to set herself apart with sharp, direct songwriting, and immaculate polish. On ‘Only One Laughing’, Hatchie turns over the binary of ‘erasing the night’ and ‘chasing the light’. The title track ‘Liquorice’ is playful but assertive. It’s a record that is joyous enough to revel in romance, but wise enough to hold the impermanence of the moment.
Part of what inspired Hatchie was delving deeper into romance films, a quiet obsession of hers (top picks: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Blue Valentine, Moonstruck, Close, and one of Linklater’s Before films).
“No matter how many I’ve watched, I’ll still discover some that say things I haven’t already seen or thought about. I thought that was really interesting, and something kind of clicked,” she says.
“I could watch more and more movies that are technically, broadly speaking, about the same thing but they all feel so different and show completely different sides of the same experience. So I was like, I feel like I can do that with music.”
That cinematic mindset, finding new angles on familiar emotions, guided Liquorice through a period of real-world upheaval for Hatchie and her husband, close collaborator Joe Agius. The couple moved to the United States in late 2021, returned to Brisbane after a year before settling for good in Melbourne in early 2023.
“We were like, ‘Okay, it’s now or never’. We went, and I think we weren’t really ready mentally, but we just jumped at the chance. Once we were over there, we realised we hadn’t really thought it through. We just got a bit overexcited and went for it,” Hatchie says.
“It was really scary to go over there, and then really scary to come home. It was hard not to feel like I’d lost out on something, or failed in some way by coming back. But I think the timing just wasn’t right.”
Hatchie went back to the United States to record Liquorice with producer Melina Duterte, who records as Jay Som and has been hailed “indie rock’s secret weapon”. Duterte was tapped after Hatchie made the call to work with more women on this album.
“I wanted to change things up. It’s very common for female pop artists to work with male producers, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not that hard to take a little extra time to research and figure out who else I could work with,” she says.
“Melina was one of the first people my label suggested, and it was a no-brainer. It’s not that I don’t feel comfortable working with the male producers I’ve worked with, but this just made sense for the album. It has such feminine energy and such a romantic feel that it felt right.”
Hatchie credits Duterte for making the guitars so good. From the defiant crunch on ‘Wonder’ to the pacey jangle of ‘Stuck’, Liqourice is spoilt for choice when it comes to the six-string.
“She also just instantly gets what we’re going for. Whenever we make musical references, she just clicks,” Hatchie says. “It was like we already knew each other when we started working together. There was this shorthand. I feel like I can hear the fun we had in the studio when I listen to it.”
Like the films that inspired it, Liquorice unfurls. The opening track ‘Anemoia’ offers a mission statement that the rest of the album wrestles with: “You won’t always recognise when you’re meant to stay/Maybe the world you want has to slip away.”
It was inspired by a conversation Hatchie had in New York with a friend who had been through a “really big breakup”.
“She said that when she was trying to get through it, she kept having to tell herself, ‘There’s no alternate timeline where we end up together. This is the only timeline. Whatever happens is the right thing to happen. It’s what’s meant to happen’,” Hatchie says.
“I really felt that — not just about relationships, but about my general life path and purpose. I’m often reminded of that. I thought it was a really fascinating and comforting way to frame things.”
For a “very uncertain person”, that brought Hatchie a sense of clarity and conviction.
“I’m always writing about not being sure, or not knowing, or wondering, or yearning, or longing for something. I’m very much an overthinker. When I was writing that lyric, I was trying to make myself feel better about that — to accept that I am that way, and that you won’t always recognise when to go or when to stay. You just have to trust that you’ve made the right decision, whatever that is.”
Acceptance is a slow evolution. But Hatchie seems to be at a stage in her life where she’s making peace with however the chips fall. She’s back to writing about love, and doing it better than ever.
“Regardless of how well received this record is, I feel like I’ve made massive strides in that part of my life. I’m strict with that — whatever happens next happens. It doesn’t matter. The whole experience was just so great in terms of valuing myself more. I know how much I value myself now as a result of the experience.”
Liquorice echoes with the assurance of an artist who is able to fully trust her heart, not just in relationships, but also now in her music.
‘Liquorice’ is out November 7 via Secretly Canadian. Pre-order on Bandcamp or pre-save on Apple Music.