Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There will always be those that say that different generations cannot relate to each other, that the signs and signals sent out by one, are at best taken as nonsense and that they haven’t lived yet, at worst, degraded to the point of supreme arrogance and as condescending as anybody could ever hope to achieve.
It’s not how the signal is sent, or indeed the question asked, it is more to do with the succinct way it is put. Everybody’s experiences are valid; they just need to be raised without resorting to verbal barbarity. For young musician Harriet!, Hidden Messages might be the name of the game, but the communication, the dialogue she has opened up in her new E.P. is far from concealed or placed into the buried state of emotion, it is so open that it practically lets in the cold snap of reality and has the fresh air feel of standing in the rush of an Arctic wind, exhilarating and punishing at the same time.
Hidden Messages is outrageously good, it is simple in its outlook and yet wonderful complex enough to hold as an example of a truth being bestowed upon the gap that binds us all.
The three tracks, You and Me, Late-Teens Bitch and Such a Tease, have the courage to be superbly truthful, to engage in a feminist ideal that not only asks questions between the genders and the generations but of one woman asking another to see life in a different way, to not be moulded into a world where being a young female automatically suggests you should be settling down to a life in which the potential inside becomes cluttered and destroyed but to have fun and to place energy into improving the spirit and the mind. It is a tonic, a response to a previous generation which said the same, uttered the same words, but did it with casual abandon and it lost its meaning; for Harriet, this is not the case, each song arguably is carried with care and it comes across as such with ease.
A very enjoyable entry into the year’s E.P. list, Hidden Messages is a call to all generations to actually listen, not to dismiss so easily the voice of a different path just because the person is younger than you. A tremendous experience, one in which to really open up to!
Ian D. Hall