Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie melted the hearts of a frozen crowd of her biggest fans when she played a headlining show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg last Saturday (February 7), and over the night she showed how far she had come in the last several years as a solo artist.
Her given name is Harriette Pilbeam, and she spent many years in bands like the Go Violets and Babaganouj before finally going it alone using a family nickname of Hatchie as her stage name, and a whole new indie artist was born. She released a number of singles early on, as well as an amazing EP Sugar & Spice in 2018 before finally releasing her debut LP Keepsake in 2019, and since then the buzz has remained deafening for this rising artist. I’m glad to see that her newest album Liquorice from last year has garnered so much critical and commercial success, and with this turn from Shoegazing guitar rock to Dream Pop bewitching, I feel like that this achievement is just the tip of the iceberg for this shooting star.
Opening the show was a great pop artist by the name of Rachel Stewart who goes by the name of alias Sedona. This was my first time seeing her play, but I am now very much a fan. She has a mix of new wave slickness and classic rock bravado that I find very fascinating, and I also felt that the dress she wore this night with the newsprint collage design deserved to be on a runway in Milan, and she proceeded to rock the show in every way. She explained during the set she spent several years here, but now she is on the other coast in LA recording a new EP called the “Super 8 Sex Tape,” but since this set I’ve dived deep into her album from last year called Getting Into Heaven, and it is now in my continuous rocking rotation. She calls her sound “pageant rock,” like rock for girls, but I find her personification of female rock idols like Stevie Nicks, Deborah Harry, and Chrissie Hynde to be entirely appealing to my gender as well. She melds dreamy seductive charms and catchy pop hooks in a very alluring manner, and I am very down to hear and see more from this totally disarming artist.
I’ve seen Hatchie play three times before, once opening for Girlpool at this very venue several years back, then opening for Alvvays with Snail Mail at Warsaw, and the other beginning the show for Japanese Breakfast at Central Park a couple years back, but this is the first I’ve seen her headline a show. During her set she noted, “this is the second time I’ve ever played this venue, and this may very well be the last.” This was a sad acknowledgement of the elephant in the room, as it was recently revealed that the Music Hall of Williamsburg will be shuttering its doors at the end of the year. It has been a mainstay of the NYC music scene since it opened under the name of Northsix back in 2001, but since the early 2010’s it has been rocking audiences as MHoW with one of the best sound qualities of any concert spots of this size in the entire city. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to say goodbye before it finally goes, and I’m sure this area of Brooklyn is bound the eventually get turned entirely into one giant overpriced boutique shop, but this little slice of a bygone Brooklyn will be missed.
She also pointed out she has had fun playing in a trio formation in the past, but this is the first she’s played as a four piece, and I will say the result is a much fuller and deeper ambiance. The new album does go much further into grand pop sounds than her more shoegazy beginnings, and she now seems to be embracing the more classic indie pop leanings she has always had lurking in the background of her lavish soundscapes.
I can’t help but feel the new material sounds like it is almost a sound sequel to the Cocteau Twins’ 1993 album Four Calendar Café, which makes a crazy full circle as the Twin’s guitarist Robin Guthrie once remixed their early single “Sure,” and that may very well be what lit the explosive fuse of her solo career in the first place. She played a majority of the new album with new masterworks of heartbreak like “Carousel” and “Lose It Again,” while peppering in some of her earlier stuff like “This Enchanted, “Quicksand,” and “The Key” from her pandemic era second album, Giving the World Away, and that early track “Sure” from her first Sugar and Spice EP really hit the spot as the main set closer.
Even though the inflatable hearts that were supposed to be filled up with helium were just filled with hot air instead do to some sort of scheduling issue, the audience still had a great time knocking those pre-Valentines balloons around, and it reminded me of much how her songs often swell my emotional thumper, then seem to relish in kicking around my feelings after they’ve been kicked to the floor. She admitted that they were supposed to leave the stage then come back for an encore, but she was still new to this whole headlining thing, and then broke right into a great new track called “Wonder’ and their biggest breakup song to date “Stay With Me” as the last song of the night. Every time I see her play she adds a new layer to my appreciation of her art, and I look forward to more to come.
Sedona:
Hatchie:
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