This Party’s A Drag

Hatchie “Unwanted Guest”

Hatchie is an artist whose music always sounds so familiar that it can feel like she’s deliberately trying to give the listener a “deja vu” sensation. Is she lifting a melody and texture from a specific old shoegaze or goth song from the late 80s/early 90s, or is it just generally sorta that vibe? My knowledge isn’t deep enough to go full “trainspotter” on her, but I do appreciate her attention to detail and dynamics. “Unwanted Guest” is her best song to date, and not coincidentally, it’s also her most dramatic. There’s a very Cure sort of bombast to this one – the suggestion of vast scale and enormous noise, but glossy and refined in its tonality. Her voice reminds me a lot of Siouxsie her, mostly in timbre but also in her confidence and authority in how she sings the verses. The most musically exciting bit of the song reminds me a little of Siouxsie too – the ascending melodic hook “put me on your list of hearts to haunt” somewhat echoes the similarly glorious “nothing or no one will ever make me let you down” refrain of “Kiss Them for Me.”

Buy it from Amazon.