Band Details

From the Promoter

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GIRLPOOL

The music Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad release as Girlpool occupies a transient space. Their constant evolution makes it perfectly impossible to articulate exactly where their project falls within the contemporary musical canon; this is one of the many reasons Girlpool’s music is so captivating. Never before has a group’s maturation been so transparently attached to the maturation of its members. This is due in large part to the fact that Girlpool came into existence exactly when Girlpool was supposed to come into existence: at the most prolific stage of the digital revolution. Both online and in the flesh, Tividad and Tucker practice radical openness to the point where it may even engender discomfort; this is exactly the point where it becomes clear why theirs’ is such a special project: they accept the possibility of discomfort—Chaos—and show you how to figure out why you might feel it. This is achieved through their ability to empathize as best friends and partners in creation, with the intention of making music that provokes. They met in November of 2013, and released their self-titled EP just 3 months later. Both were playing in multiple bands at the time. Harmony was 18. Cleo was 17. The growth they have fostered in one another over the years explains the project’s disparate discography; each record is a photograph of Girlpool, growing over time. Their roots are a certain shade of punk—organized chaos dressed as earworms. “Where You Sink,” one of the first singles off their upcoming record, What Chaos Is Imaginary, gives you an idea of how much things have changed since 2014. It’s not all good. “I was experiencing a lot of mental health issues,” says Tividad of the title. “That song comes from a place of being disconnected from reality. The world is so complicated. It's hard to believe in magic, or that anything exists.” Notice the order: magic, then the principle existence of things. A peak into Harmony. Though it is the 3rd track on Girlpool’s newest record, “Where You Sink” was written at a time when the two were living in different states on the East Coast. It proved to be a period of immense change for the both of them; each focused—more than they ever had before—on their solo music. “Before, we would build our songs together with four hands, from the ground up,” says Tucker, referring to the songwriting process that produced the debut EP and 2015’s critically acclaimed follow-up, Before The World Was Big. “Our songs used to be intertwined in a different way. We brought our separate experiences to the songs that we crafted together, we valued understanding that they were multidimensional.”Their solo work consistently breathes new life into Girlpool. The two have since become comfortable with the process being more independent, more fluid. They both take part in the production and arrangement of the music, but they’ve strayed from beginning hand in
hand in every instance. They connect somewhere along the way, working together when it feels right. Discussing the new process, Harmony says, “It’s helped me find validity in parts of my writing I found to be unapproachable. I thought my stream-of-consciousness was unsophisticated.” There’s probably a great pun available re: shedding self-consciousnessto release a more sophisticated stream-of-consciousness. In any case, What Chaos is Imaginary—the record and the song—is what the stream looks like when self-consciousness is shed. Where Harmony embraces chaos, Cleo organizes it. “It’s hard for me to feel completion without achieving a vision that I have. I’ll imagine the kind of climate I want to create inside a song,” says Cleo of his process. “Once I fall in love with the direction, it’s getting there that can take time.” Finishing a song may take time and even prove to be difficult for him at times, but the product is invariably polished. Considering the near-perfect balance in the songs on What Chaos is Imaginary, their dynamic makes sense. “It took a really long time to record this record. It feels like a photograph of a very transitional time.”What Chaos is Imaginary is a collection of songs unlike any Girlpool songs you’ve ever heard, exactly what Powerplant was to Before The World Was Big. For the first time, it is clear who wrote what song. 2019 will see drum machines and synthesizers and beautiful/new harmonies and huge guitars and at least one orchestral breakdown by a string octet. “It was invigorating playing stripped down and raw when Girlpool began. As we change, what gets us there is going to change too.”It’s hard to imagine what might follow What Chaos is Imaginary. Girlpool’s growth has a steady momentum forward, towards something greater with every stride that they take. By the time the record comes out, they’ll be far from here, wherever here is.

HATCHIE

Hatchie is the world of Harriette Pilbeam. To hear her music is to step inside her mind; a dreamy landscape where cascading synths, jangling guitars, propulsive rhythms and white noise undulate beneath undeniable and irresistible pop melodies. Rather than focusing on the external world of her daily life in Brisbane, Pilbeam instead turns her gaze inwards, making a soundtrack out of her daydreams, setting her emotional life to song.

Take brand new single “Sure” for example. Written on a whim when a melody jumped into Pilbeam’s head, and finished swiftly in one day, the chorus plaintively unravels, setting the sorrow to shimmering synth washes, wrapping the whole thing up in a melody so gorgeous that it would fit seamlessly into The Sundays and Alvvays songbooks. “All of my songs start with singing,” Pilbeam says. “I hear the melody in my mind first and then work out the chords I’m imagining under that. I have a good ear for music, but I don’t know chord names or much music theory. I just kind of figure it out.”

This instinctual pop nous is undoubtedly on full display in “Sure”, but like all of Hatchie’s music, the track trades in shade as well as light. It’s at once accessible yet cerebral, walking a line between instant ear worm and something deeper and more oblique. “I think that’s because I’m still making up my mind,” offers Harriette. “I’m kind of jumping between, ‘Do I want to just make fun pop songs? Or do I want it to be more shoegaze and more of a band sound?’ I really love writing pop songs, but then messing them up and turning them into something else. Something darker.”

“Sure” continues the story that began with the runaway success of this year’s pop gem “Try”. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, “Try” announced Hatchie as an artist to watch. After uploading the track to Unearthed in May, the song instantly got added to radio playlists across the country. Triple J’s Nick Findlay called it, “a huge first track!” Hatchie signed management and booking deals. Her name started popping up on festival lineups. NPR debuted the clip. The track’s reach was far and wide, even winning Hatchie a fan in Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie. “It’s pretty weird being social media friends with one of your heroes” laughs Pilbeam.

Things don’t seem to be slowing down any time for Hatchie either. Having already toured nationally with The Creases, there are shows supporting Ball Park Music and The Temper Trap on the horizon plus appearances at Festival Of The Sun and perhaps most impressively, South By South West in Austin next year.

Having played in her friends’ bands in Brisbane, namely Go Violets and Babaganouj, Hatchie is Pilbeam’s first foray into solo territory, something she seems undaunted by. “I feel like I’m only just beginning to really assert myself in the world and the Hatchie project has forced me to reassess and make so many positive changes,” she says. “When I look back on this period of time, I think I’ll see Hatchie as a huge evolutionary force in my life.”

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