The double life of Hatchie: ‘I toured with Kylie, then came home and worked in a cafe’

On the day her latest single, Lights On, was released, Harriette Pilbeam was stacking and racking clothes in a shop in Brisbane. As the song and its slick music video racked up tens of thousands of plays, Pilbeam tweeted a meme about the “weird dichotomy” she has been living – Hatchie, the popular musician, getting by in the pandemic by working casual jobs.

“It’s definitely weird, but I don’t think people realise how difficult it is to be that kind of artist who can quit their job and spend months on end in a studio,” the 28-year-old Australian singer says. “It’s much more common to be living this weird double life; I did tours with Kylie Minogue, but then went home and worked a random cafe job.”

That contrast is made all the more stark with Giving the World Away, her second album under the Hatchie name. The album nails the sound and visuals of a time before Napster and Spotify, when pop stars and cult acts could still burn through record label money to create dark, glossy crossover hits.

After her debut EP and first album, both filled with shimmering, harmony-filled indie rock redolent of the Cranberries, Cocteau Twins and Slowdive, Pilbeam initially envisioned the second Hatchie LP as a pivot towards the sweaty, loud atmosphere of the club.

“I thought it was going to be even more like 90s house Madchester, acid house vibes – and it ended up being a lot more introspective,” she says. “It didn’t feel quite like the right timing for me to put that record out. Lyrically, I think I wanted to focus on more serious subject matter.”

Pilbeam and her longtime Hatchie bandmate – and now husband – Joe Agius had travelled to the US at the start of 2020 for a writing trip, working with producers Jorge Elbrecht and Dan Nigro, who would produce and co-write one of the year’s biggest hits in Olivia Rodrigo’s Drivers License. The pandemic hit just as Pilbeam returned to Australia; a two-month writing break stretched into two years off the road.

With Elbrecht producing the album remotely from Denver, Pilbeam and Agius continued to work as they had since their early days in Brisbane’s DIY rock scene: from the spare room of a sharehouse. And after three years of virtually nonstop touring, this abrupt pause turned Pilbeam’s writing inward, as she found the time and space to reach beyond the “juvenile” lyrical themes of first love and heartbreak of early Hatchie.

“When you’re a teenager you think you’re going to have everything figured out by 25, but it’s definitely not that way at all,” she says. “I went through this whole second wave of self-doubt, trying to figure out who I was and where I fit in the world. I was just forced to work through it in 2020 because I was stuck at home.”

Doing that work has also created more space between Pilbeam and her increasingly confident alter ego Hatchie, who she often refers to in third person or as a “character”. The Hatchie of 2022 can now be seen roaming the stage without her bass guitar. (“Playing bass has always been my security blanket.”) And in the clip for lead single This Enchanted, she appears as an outgoing pop star, owning the camera’s gaze while wearing angel wings that recall Claire Danes in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (another key reference for her album).

Despite her introspection, the new Hatchie album still brings a big, rhythmic sound, evoking a particular 90s milieu, somewhere between Savage Garden, Impossible Princess-era Kylie and Happy Mondays.

“I realised that if you want to play bigger shows you have to write bigger songs and tell yourself that it’s going to happen,” Pilbeam says. “It sounds lame, but it really does start from within – you have to really believe it yourself.”

Such self-belief became increasingly hard-won in a time when many of the hallmarks of being a working musician – touring, rehearsing, regularly releasing music – have been off the cards. As Pilbeam returned to retail work in Brisbane while chipping away at the album, she also started a Patreon as a way of reminding listeners, and herself, that Hatchie was still alive.

“At times it felt like the project didn’t even exist – even if I was working on it at home, sometimes it’s like if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it,” she says. “Without touring it’s really difficult to make a living off music – touring and merch sales are the two really big things for artists of my size, so when those options aren’t there you really don’t have anything.”

Things feel a little more real with the album about to drop; Pilbeam and Agius plan to relocate to the US to tour it. But for just a little while longer, the double life continues.

“I’m putting together this record with this incredible producer, the drummer from Beach House [James Barone], all these really cool, important people,” she says. “And the next day I wake up and go work this job, just sweating profusely while serving rich people their coffees or selling them skincare products.”

• Giving the World Away is released on Friday 22 April (Ivy League Records)