Hatchie’s third album is unobjectionable but unremarkable synth pop.
Hatchie, the project of Australian songwriter and vocalist Harriette Pilbeam, released their third album last week with label Secretly Canadian, home also to the likes of Faye Webster, Mereba and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Liquorice was written by Pilbeam and her collaborator and husband Joe Agius, and produced by Agius and the artist Jay Som.
Hatchie is a synth pop artist through and through to mixed results. Their apex might be 2022’s “Don’t Leave Me in The Rain,” which weaves high melodrama with sweeping synths for a pleading anthem that somehow tilts uplifting. There’s nothing quite so moving on Liquorice, which doesn’t leave a mark as an album, but offers up a few synthy confections for placement on ambient indie-pop playlists.
The title track is one of those prime offerings; it layers an airy industrial production over dreamy teeny guitars to land squarely in 2010s indie pop territory. The following songs, “Carousel” and “Sage,” are similarly yummy. The record, those songs especially, sounds like something The Cardigans whipped up for a Glossier ad. “Carousel” is spry and forward but twisted ever so slightly to render it moody; it’s propulsive but cyclical, like its namesake. The grounded beat brought forward by prominent drums on “Sage” lets Pilbeam’s vocals lilt and sway where elsewhere on the record they can be even to the point of mundanity.
By the next track, “Someone Else’s News,” it all starts to blur together. The reverb on “Anchor” is at least trying something, if it doesn’t totally land; “Wonder” is healthy back-to-school indie rock and the bridge on “Part That Bleeds” stands out, if only because it’s the only time Pilbeam steps away from her ever-present cooing vocals in favor of a clipped refrain. But after album closer “Stuck,” one feels largely undisturbed, unimpressed upon. Liquorice doesn’t clearly communicate any sort of journey, nor differentiate between songs enough, though some of those songs are groovy enough that they’ll fit nicely on a midmorning playlist. Look to Liquorice for serviceable ambient synth pop, but not for masterpieces.
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