Hatchie Returns With This Enchanted: New Song Of The Day

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Hatchie brings us some much-needed dream pop on this dreary Thursday.

The song is This Enchanted and and here’s the blurb with more:

Ivy League Records are elated to announce the stunning return of Brisbane dream-pop artist Hatchie with the release of ‘This Enchanted’, the first new single since her internationally acclaimed debut album Keepsake (2019). A tidal wave of swirling textures, kaleidoscopic guitars, layers of twinkling synths and intensified energy, ‘This Enchanted’ feels like a reintroduction to Hatchie’s sound.

HatchiePilbeam says, “This Enchanted’ encapsulates everything I wanted to do moving forward from my first album. I started writing it with Jorge and Joe in February 2020 and completed it from afar in lockdown later in the year. We had been talking about making something dancey but shoegaze.”

“It’s one of the more lighthearted, lyrically vague songs of my new recordings about falling in love; it’s not a perfect relationship, but you’re enthralled by one another and it’s an easy love,”  she continues. “It’s one of the most fun songs I’ve written, so it was a no-brainer to pick it as my first solo release in almost two years. It feels so right to be working with a label as exciting as Secretly as I step into new territory with Hatchie. I’ve been counting down the days until its release for a long time.”

To coincide with the release, Hatchie also announces her signing to Secretly Canadian (ex ANZ). Hatchie remains with Ivy League Records for Australia & New Zealand.

A Hatchie song is immediately transportive – a celestial collision of shoegaze and pop, a haze of reverb-laden guitar lines and lyrics acutely charting a vivid flood of emotions, about anything from falling in love to anxieties about your own identity. It’s a map of Harriette Pilbeam’s interior world, wrapped up in gauzy, wall-of-sound daydreams.

Punctuated by an oversized bassline, ‘This Enchanted’ felt like a lightbulb moment in Pilbeam’s songwriting, a burst of creative energy and sudden inspiration for the new places she’d take Hatchie from the initial waves of success. A new direction inviting more movement, more fun – diverting away from shoegaze and inviting the listener to look up, too.

Hatchie’s ascent to international acclaim came suddenly, although Pilbeam had been an active member of Brisbane’s local music scene since she was 18. In 2017, she uploaded ‘Try’ to triple j Unearthed. It led to immediate airplay, eventually going on to be one of the top spins on the station. An avalanche of attention followed, all before Hatchie had yet to play a single live gig.

It catapulted the project to overseas touring, with Hatchie playing sets at SXSW and gigs across the US before her 2018 debut EP, Sugar and Spice, had come out. And in the span of just two years, Hatchie toured with/opened for the likes of Japanese Breakfast, Girlpool, Alvvays, Death Cab for Cutie, Beach House, Men I Trust, and Kylie Minogue, while also playing her own headlining gigs across the US and UK. A slew of major respected festival slots followed, including Pitchfork Paris, The Great Escape, Primavera, and more. International publications took note, too; Stereogum and Pitchfork both dubbed Hatchie as an artist to watch almost immediately, with the latter aptly naming her as “the dream-pop idol of tomorrow.”

Following Sugar and Spice’s release, ‘Sure’, another break-out single from the EP, went on to be remixed by legendary Cocteau Twins founder, Robin Guthrie. Keepsake, Hatchie’s debut full-length, followed in 2019. Keepsake arrived fully-formed and to critical acclaim, described as “distilled and delicious dream-pop” by NPR Music, “gorgeous, dreamy” by Uncut, and “stunning and atmospheric” by Consequence, among other glowing reviews. The record teetered between industrial and delicate — like the saccharine darkness of ‘Without a Blush’, the synthed-out ‘Stay With Me’, and the guitar-heavy ‘Obsessed’ — and served as a fitting introduction for an extraordinary songwriter at the outset of her career.

So now, Hatchie returns – with a new clear-eyed view of her songwriting abilities, and what her project can be. ‘This Enchanted’ was conceived while Pilbeam and Hatchie guitarist Joe Agius were writing in Los Angeles. They were working alongside producer Jorge Elbrecht, known for his work with dream pop contemporaries like Sky Ferreira, Japanese Breakfast, and Wild Nothing.

Hatchie – ‘This Enchanted’

Single out now through Ivy League Records

Buy/stream here

Marty Duda
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