Hatchie — Keepsake



Ivy League | genius.com
Shyness shivers through a gleaming, glassy dream-pop debut
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Harriet Pilbeam is hiding.

With that striking image of her face — smudged between two facsimiles, drained of colour — she reveals the fundamental truth at the core of her musicianship: that even while confessing her deepest desires, she cannot bear to be seen.

An overpowering shyness shivers through this album’s backbone. Pilbeam presses her voice deep into the mix, less a lyric vector and more a muffled ambient instrument. She swoops and dips, mumbles and sighs, conveying so much more than words ever could, a feat all the more remarkable considering that she can barely be heard at all.

Keepsake charts a golden mean between rigid pop architectures wreathed in humid reverb, and dense shoegazey blur dispersed with structural sunbeams. Fitting, considering that Pilbeam counts among her influences both My Bloody Valentine and Kylie Minogue.

It’s a statement and a half when a solo act chooses a new name. Perhaps Pilbeam is waiting for her second album to emerge from behind her bulwark and embrace herself.

But for now, her debut stands solid and gleaming as glass.