Licorice has long been sought out and snaffled for its touted benefits, which range from digestion to respiratory health and skin conditions. It’s handy, too, in the creation of music.
Hatchie’s third studio album Liquorice, which drops today (Nov. 7) through a global arrangement with Secretly Canadian, was created on the stuff, both the sticky snacks and the tea.
“I was introduced to licorice lollies at a young age because it’s my mum’s favorite, so my taste for it was already there,” Hatchie tells Billboard.
A bag of licorice, the top-shelf gear produced Darrell Lea, was close by when Hatchie caught up with Billboard at Summa House, an airy club in Fortitude Valley, the entertainment precinct of her hometown, Brisbane.
Licorice tea, she explains, “is really soothing for the vocal cords,” something learned on tour years ago “when I was struggling with chronic laryngitis. It coats your throat which really helps with tickles, so I’ve always got some handy when I’m singing. I drink it pretty much every day now.”
Hatchie is the project of Harriette Pilbeam, one part dream-pop, another shoegaze, and which, earlier in her career, the Australian singer and songwriter depicted as a creative mashup of Cocteau Twins with Kylie Minogue.
Perhaps that’s still the case, though this new LP, reads a statement, “reflects a woman increasingly comfortable in her own skin, no longer feeling the pressure to fit into a box or prove herself, whatever that even means.”
The album, “my best work yet,” she writes on social media, is the followup to 2022’s Giving The World Away. Spanning 11 tracks, Liquorice was written in Brisbane, then Melbourne, and completed in Los Angeles, where it was recorded at the home studio of producer Jay Som (real name: Melina Duterte), alongside Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint, Courtney Barnett) on drums, and her bandmate, co-writer and partner in life, Joe Agius.
Is this “peak Hatchie,” where confidence, creativity and experience collide? “God I hope so,” she remarks. “It’s taken a lot of self-discovery to get to this point of creative self-acceptance.”
The album was mixed by Alex Farrar (Wednesday, MJ Lenderman) and mastered by Greg Obis (Dutch Interior, Slow Pulp, Wishy), and is led by the singles “Lose It Again,” “Only One Laughing, and “Sage,” which arrives today with an official music video.
The new collection is the first global Hatchie release through Secretly Canadian, which signed the Aussie act in 2021, two years after arrival of debut LP Keepsake, and on the heels of plaudits from Pitchfork, Stereogum and elsewhere.
If confusion abounds on whether Hatchie is an artist or an act, Pilbeam is happy to clear it up. “It’s closer to a band at this point,” she says. “I could never make so many decisions by myself.”
To celebrate the release of Liquorice, Hatchie announces 2026 U.S. dates at Los Angeles’ Lodge Room (Feb. 2) and Music Hall of Williamsburg (Feb. 20). See below and stream Liquorice.
Hatchie 2026 U.S. tour dates:
Feb. 2 — Lodge Room, Los Angeles, CA
Feb. 20 — Music Hall of Williamsburg, New York, NY