Hachi: Licorice Review – Stunning dream music with welcome flashes of depravity | music

AAlmost all of Hachi’s music could easily fit into a coming-of-age film. Her songs, for the most part, are hazy musings on puppy love and the devastation that follows; They yearn for a redemption that feels fateful and annoyingly out of reach. You can imagine Harriet Pilbeam’s Melvée harmonies soundtracking a high school prom speckled with refracted disco ball flashes, or envision her woolly guitars over a montage of light-hearted teenage debauchery. These are pre-made pieces of music to convey big emotions; Everyone knows the huge melodrama of the first, second or twentieth crush.

Licorice, the title of Pilbeam’s powerful third album, winks at her breakout 2018 EP, Sugar and Spice. This formative work was a beautiful, pop-focussed blast of pop music—and it owes as much to Carly Rae Jepsen as it does to the Cocteau Twins, whose founder Robin Guthrie ended up providing a remix of Pilbeam’s single Sure. Meanwhile, Licorice is more mature and less immediately palatable, eschewing the imaginative thread hooks of Pilbeam’s previous work.

At its best, the record attempts to deconstruct the grand romanticism that Pilbeam cut its teeth on. On dizzy licorice The first single, Lose It Again, retreats the rush of new love into motion sickness as she mocks the “twisted hair” of a distant suitor – as close to a snarl as her honeyed vocals allow. Wonder’s motivational poison pen letter strikes a harsher note for a similarly unavailable lover. “I want you to wonder ’til the sky’s red / I want you to hang on to every word I said,” Pilbeam sings, reveling not in mutual affection, but in mutual misery. These are welcome flashes of depravity that make earnest declarations of desire and devotion.

Romance in the music industry was also soured. On her 2022 sophomore record, “Giving the World Away,” written during lockdown, Pilbeam interrogates her craft with startling anxiety: a portrait of an aspiring writer whose relationship with art and ambition has become tenuous over time. Named after the feeling of nostalgia for something never before seen, licorice opener Anemoia plays like an elegy for Pilbeam’s thwarted dreams. “Maybe the world you want should disappear,” she laments over pulsating synths.

The track ends with an unexpected wink: “Secretly I was happier all the time.” But happiness comes Cost of experiments. “Giving the World Away” was a huge swing that saw Pilbeam expand her sound – influenced by disco, electroshock and new wave – and work with true hitmakers including Dan Nigro, the pop guru behind much of Olivia Rodrigo and Chappelle Rowan’s productions. By contrast, Licorice seems more restrained by design: falling back on the references that have long colored Pilbeam’s music. You can hear Dolores O’Riordan’s wounded vocals on Only One Laughing, or the deafening deluge of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive through Liquorice’s production, so it could threaten to subtract Pilbeam’s voice entirely.

For an artist so influenced by shoes, Pilbeam’s interest has always been skyward. Throughout her career, she kissed the stars, gazed at the sun, watched the clouds, and extracted meaning from the moon. She has repeatedly turned to Heaven for divine guidance, revenge, and forgiveness for love and its consequences.

Despite her best efforts, Liquorice finds Pilbeam unable to completely resist the temptations of infatuation. Lyrically, the album often veers towards giddiness. “I lost control of myself/Over and over again,” she sings on Carousel, succumbing to the centrifugal force of reckless romance. On the title track “I Give Myself to You”; Elsewhere, in the part that bleeds, there is a “surrender to curiosity.” At times, her surrender to the amazing power of love can seem frustratingly mysterious. “You’re falling in love with me/You’re falling in love,” she deadpans like a hypnotist on Sage, skirting the line between stupor and numbness. The drone’s entry anchor is particularly inert, never advancing beyond its metaphor that links a doomed manipulation to the ocean’s depths.

When Pilbeam finally ascended toward the sky again, the result was dramatic. Stuck – the album’s closer and best track – Rockets heads towards a thrash so intense it’s downright insulting. “I’m still stuck in these pathetic dreams,” she says regretfully, her vocals transparent over catapulted guitars that beat like a heartbeat. She’s classic Hachi: awkward, charming, and impossibly captivating in the face of it all. Cue the credits.