Friday night the streets of WEHO were eerily quiet, the parking near the Troubadour was wide open for once, the city had cleared out for Labor Day weekend, but step inside The Troubadour and, BAM, the place was packed.
For the last night on a brief West Coast tour, Brisbane’s bass-playing/song-swaying/crowd slaying indie pop live-wire Hatchie, and band, took to the stage and ripped through a 15-song set. Songs from the pre-pandemic releases “Sugar & Spice” (2018) and “Keepsake” (2019) took up much of the first half of the set with highlights including dreamy “Her Own Heart” with its floating vocal harmonies, “Kiss the Stars” with the disco ball spinning, and the classic “Bad Guy” in stripped down guitar/vocals arrangement and Hatchie displaying some awesome vocal power belting it out in the second half. And more disco ball.
The venue aglow and the audience rapt and the vibes vibing Hatchie bantered about it being the last night of a four-date tour and being sad it was coming to a close and how happy she was to be playing the Troubadour. Then the crowd got one more guitar/voice song with “Obsessed” which the singer mentioned was written about being home alone on a Friday, but here she was now with 450 people on a Friday night instead.
The explosive second half of the set featured tracks from this year’s release Giving the World Away (via Secretly Canadian), with the big beat power of “The Rhythm”, the almost Industrial/Drum & Bass blazer “Nosedive”, and driving “This Enchanted” where the lighting went all bonkers. The singer thanked the crowd for going along on the ride with her as she explores all sorts of genres in her music. The crowd all sang along on “Quicksand”, and we went all the way back to the first EP for “Sure” to close out the night. No Encore. Hatchie doesn’t do encores.
And then back out into the weirdly empty WEHO night. With one last glimpse of the huge line snaking out of the Troubadour of people waiting to get to the merch.
Words and photos by Tim Aarons
