Babaganouj, the band home to singer-songwriter Hatchie, have shared their first release since 2017, a single called ‘What Planet Do You Come From?’.
It sees the Brisbane quartet return with a choral chant of the song’s title, before launching into thunderous drum sequences courtesy of bandmate George Browning. For her part, Hatchie provides supporting vocals for Charles Sale, who pleads for clarity from a lover. “Oh darling, take me to your living room,” he sings on the track’s final verse, imploring the song’s subject to “just tell me what you want”.
The single coincides with the announcement of Babaganouj’s upcoming debut album, Jumbo Pets. Set for release next year, the band described the record – a follow-up to the 2017 EP ‘Clarity Restored’ – as “a statement of wide-eyed romantic wonder”.
Listen to ‘What Planet Do You Come From?’ below:
Babaganouj is one of two Brisbane bands to have included Hatchie (real name Harriette Pilbeam). She formed the rock group alongside Sale and Peter McDowell in 2011, the same year she joined the now-disbanded Go Violets.
Speaking of the differences between the bands and her own solo material in a 2018 interview with NME, Hatchie said: “Babaganouj is a lot more guitar-based – like Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub. Whereas Go Violets is a bit more like guitar-pop, indie. Neither of them are quite as pop or as polished as Hatchie.”
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‘What Planet Do You Come From?’ arrives the same year as Hatchie’s sophomore album, ‘Giving the World Away’, which was released in April. In a four-star review of the project, which followed the 2019 debut ‘Keepsake’, NME wrote: “‘Giving the World Away’ transports the listener into a different, expansive world.”
Earlier this month, Hatchie released her first post-album solo single, ‘Nosedive’. Elsewhere, Hatchie – who was featured on the cover of NME Australia’s March issue – forms part of the line-ups for both Beyond The Valley and Melbourne’s new concert series ‘ONSTAGE’, which are respectively set to take place in December and January.