Hatchie
Sugar & Spice

Harriette “Hatchie” Pilbeam is a living emoji, the red little heart that magically multiplies and flutters through the ether; but also the broken one.

Because love is a wonderful thing, this has been well-established for a long time.

But love is also a journey, and this I have learned since I started following certain philosophical broadcasts that air on TV.

Like every journey, the journey of love is sometimes bumpy.

Hatchie, from the height of her (almost) 26 years, knows this well and seriously claims that in her first album she wanted to pour out the sensations felt the first time she fell in love; and yet it's not that simple, it cannot be reduced to just loving or not, not only is there a third way but there are several hundred.

These hundred or so alternatives, Hatchie sums up in 5 songs written and scattered over the last few years, between roughly 2015 and 2018; and then, as it was done many years ago, when albums were more like collections of successful singles, those songs Hatchie brings together in a single album and so a few months ago out comes “Sugar & Spice”.

Now, there are those like Stephin Merritt aka Magnetic Fields who have dedicated a magnum opus of 69 songs to love, musical fragments of a discourse on love that compares to the literary fragments of Roland Barthes, and someone has even invoked the themed sonnets of William Shakespeare.

There are also those, like Hatchie, who do things much more straightforwardly and manage with 5 songs, speaking the down-to-earth and universally comprehensible language that we all speak a little, I certainly count myself in, more or less the language to which Federico Moccia has accustomed us in his books and, as if those weren't enough, in his films based on his books.

Look, if Federico Moccia had commissioned Hatchie for the soundtrack of his films, all indiscriminately, those films would have been much more dignified and I could have said without fear of contradiction that the movie as such is a colossal flop but the soundtrack, well, that's noteworthy; and so today we would have millions of young people equipped with gadgets from which Hatchie's songs emanate, and it would really all be very beautiful.

Because, and here I get to the point, even in its essential simplicity at the textual level, Hatchie's songs work wonderfully, firstly because she has both the physique and the voice for the role, and if listening is enough to highlight the talent of this young Australian, the advice is to also take a look at the videos that accompany all the single tracks and highlight that talent three times over.

Then there's the music, of course, and it takes the form of tremendously catchy and incisive pop, with more than appealing hooks; perhaps someone exaggerated by bringing up the Cocteau Twins, but not too much since Robin Guthrie then collaborated with Hatchie on the remixing of some of her tracks.

Be that as it may, basically the story sees Hatchie or whoever for her, grappling with the first throes of love.

In the sense that she thinks she loves him, but she's not so sure, and she's not even that sure that he loves her, rather she has so many doubts in her head about it that she's convincing herself that maybe it would be better to cut this story off entirely and put a heavy enough stone over it so it can't be dug up again. But she's not quite sure she really wants to do that.

So, to convince herself once and for all, at night, before sleep, she wishes herself goodnight and sweet dreams, hoping that he will come in her dreams and declare eternal love, making her smile, at least during sleep, because with eyes open, it's just doubts and uncertainties.

But then, upon waking, she doesn't even realize if she dreamt the fateful dream or not and thus she still abandons herself to all her insecurities, but she can't stop loving him, in fact, she loves him more and more every time she sees him, even if the sugar doesn't entirely cover the bitter aftertaste that remains in her thoughts.

However, she tries to live that story, she tries every minute, and she prays to him to try together, she reads in his eyes that he also wants to try, they try to set the calendar back and avoid obstacles on their path, because love is a path full of obstacles, sometimes.

They try, they try, but I guess the story ends here without even ever starting, she simply leaves convinced that it's not her fault, it's him who behaved badly and doesn't deserve her, goodbye. But she keeps thinking about it.

This is more or less the story sung by Hatchie: it's a great sentimental mess, those who watch don't understand anything, but more or less we've all been through it and at least we understand.

If they are roses, they will blush.