Hatchie Returns with the Romantic, Shoegazey Dream “This Enchanted”

Her first single since 2019 comes with the news of her signing to Secretly Canadian. 
Hatchie Returns with the Romantic, Shoegazey Dream “This Enchanted”

Her first single since 2019 comes with the news of her signing to Secretly Canadian. 

Words: Margaret Farrell

photo by Nick Maguire

September 14, 2021

Harriette Pilbeam first presented herself as Hatchie—delivering dreamy, 90s-indebted pop music to us—in 2018 with her debut EP Sugar & Spice. Since then, she’s progressed into other shadowy or noisier parts of that era and found a balance on her 2019 debut album Keepsake. Today, she’s returned with her first music since, along with the announcement that she’s signed to Secretly Canadian. The single “This Enchanted” combines early-90s synthpop and shoegaze, somewhere between Electronic and Slowdive. Its chorus is a burst of fuzz while a grooving bass line cuts straight through. Hatchie sings about staying in the greener parts of a complicated love: “Next time I should learn to just let go / But then you take some more and lie.”

“‘This Enchanted’ encapsulates everything I wanted to do moving forward from my first album,” Pilbeam said of the single. “It’s one of the more lighthearted, lyrically vague songs of my new recordings about falling in love; it’s not a perfect relationship, but you’re enthralled by one another and it’s an easy love. It’s one of the most fun songs I’ve written, so it was a no-brainer to pick it as my first solo release in almost two years. It feels so right to be working with a label as exciting as Secretly as I step into new territory with Hatchie. I’ve been counting down the days until its release for a long time.”

The accompanying video is something between Romeo + Juliet and the club scene from The Hunger. Despite “This Enchanted” being packed with 90s and early-2000s influences, it’s a refreshing mix of twilit textures and melancholic romance that Hatchie excels at.