Review Summary: Dream pop: marginally less flat line edition
Hatchie is back, determined as ever to refashion ‘90s dreamgaze tropes into today’s earworms. This comprises a new album,
Giving The World Away, and it sees her adjust her approach from her debut
Keepsake, now less blissed-out and more synthed-up. This does surprisingly little to change her appeal, likely because she retains the two key pitfalls that proved so obstructive from the get-go. Pitfall the First: the instrumentals occupy a distinctly backing-track function and largely fail to tap into the full scope of their famously rich '90s source texts on any level beyond transitory ear candy. Hatchie's songwriting is economical to a fault, frequently teasing lush tones but subjugating them to demands of the basic pop playbook at every turn. The album's aesthetics are vaguely mostly
there, but their function feels overly superficial.
Giving The World Away does raise the bar over
Keepsake in that it explores a wider range of palettes (jangle pop, gazey noise pop, synth-pop) and backs itself with a more momentous set of beats, but this is largely undermined by Pitfall the Second: Hatchie the vocalist.
A striking contrast to the rest of her retro chic, she disregards the precedent set by the Rachel Goswells, Miki Berenyis and even Hope Sandovals of the world in layering their voices as just one facet of a wider dreamlike canvas, instead placing hers at the fore of both mix and songwriting * la traditional pop vocalist. She ain’t it: her flair, tone, mic presence and inflection are sufficient to back a strong set of songs, but not nearly up to carrying a whole album. Not that it’s entirely her fault; there are enough limp hooks and misgauged performance choices here that the strength of her voice is often neither here nor there. "Take My Hand" mistakes languid drawl for midtempo cool, "The Key" uses surging overdrive as a crutch for interchangeably uninspired melodies, and "The Rhythm" gestures in the vague direction of the dancefloor but struggles to rise from its barstool.
On the other hand, the moments when she comes into her own are frustratingly brief: opener “Lights On” drops an exhilarating chorus, while the easy highlight "Quicksand" skips ahead of Hatchie’s pastiche timeline and dishes out '00s hairbrush diva superstardom in glorious form. Is it unfortunate that the latter's bridge, with its 8 bars of swooned out vocalise chopped and skewed with a tremolo filter, is also by far the most engaging vocal moment on the album? Probably, but it’s also a welcome hint that there might be more in Hatchie's retro crusade than a tiresomely straight-laced set of passé pop songs.
