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"She was a willowy beauty with charming shyness and a slightly
tragic air." So says Brett Milano, of Juliana Hatfield in her
starting-out days, in his recent book The Sound Of Our Town:
A History Of Boston Rock+Roll.
Juliana Hatfield - no less an intriguing, compelling character
today - has been working as a recording artist for twenty years.
With the release of How To Walk Away, her 10th solo
album, she again proves herself to be an uncompromising artist
with impeccable pop instincts, a disdain for artifice, a completely
original voice, and a contrarian streak.
Starting in her teens, with her first band, critically-acclaimed,
Boston-based indie rock outfit the Blake Babies (who self-released
their first album before moving on to the North Carolina-based
independent Mammoth Records), Hatfield has paved her own unique
way, evolving with each subsequent record. She signed to Atlantic
Records as a solo artist and racked up a string of mid-nineties
modern-rock hits ("My Sister," "Spin The Bottle," "Universal
Heartbeat") before leaving the label in 1998. Hatfield was then
the first signing to Zoe Records, a Rounder Records imprint.
Zoe's fourth and final Hatfield release was 2004's In Exile
Deo, named one of that year's 10 best albums by Jon Pareles
in The New York Times.
In 2005 Hatfield came full circle, back to full DIY independence,
starting her own label (Ye Olde Records) and releasing the catchy
but somewhat abrasive Made In China ("her most urgent, refreshingly
unpolished output in years," said Time Out New York).
How To Walk Away, also on Ye Olde Records, finds Hatfield
singing in top form. "Finally," she says, "I feel like my voice
has grown into itself and I'm not struggling so much against
its little-girl-ness."
The album features guest appearances by two other distinctive
vocalists: Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler on "This Lonely
Love" and Nada Surf's Matthew Caws on "Such A Beautiful Girl."
Other featured guest musicians were Fountains Of Wayne guitarist
Jody Porter (some lead guitar); Jeff Hill, of Rufus Wainwright's
band, on bass; and Ethan Eubanks of the Grey Race on drums.
Tracy Bonham guested on violin, and Jason Hatfield, Juliana's
brother, played piano on two songs, which he co-wrote ("Remember
November" and "Such A Beautiful Girl").
How To Walk Away was recorded at Stratosphere Sound,
the NYC studio co-owned by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne),
James Iha (formerly of Smashing Pumpkins), and Andy Chase (of
revered alt-rock/pop band Ivy), who produced the album. How
To Walk Away is evocative, layered, and unhurried yet Chase
has managed to retain Hatfield's essential rawness of spirit,
smoothing out some rough edges but not all. Witness, for example,
the loose, danceable "Now I'm Gone," sung (and played) by Hatfield
in one inspired improvisational take. And while she has frequently
drawn from personal experience in the past, these songs are
some of her most candid ever.
"The songs are very autobiographical," says Hatfield, "although
I do recognize that whenever I'm writing about myself I am,
in a sense, writing about - or for - everyone else; I know that
other people out there are just like me."
Walking away - and the loneliness that sometimes results - is
a recurring theme. But rather than agonizing over a sad state
of affairs, How To Walk Away takes a fatalistic attitude
toward relationships. It is set in a vaguely purgatorial post-relationship
- or maybe pre-relationship - landscape. The songs' protagonists
don't expect to find wisdom, serenity and forgiveness (there
are no Hollywood happy endings here) but at the same time they
know that understanding and self-awareness may come.
Fatalism's flip side is faith, and even in an outwardly sad
song like "Such A Beautiful Girl" ("She's such a beautiful girl/but
she lives in an ugly world"), hope is not dead; the girl of
the title waits patiently for a future that she knows - odds
are - will be better than where she finds herself now.
Hatfield's biting sense of humor comes out in "Just Lust," a
post-feminist anthem that turns the idea of women as the emotional,
needy sex on its head, addressing an emotional, needy male.
The bittersweet yet life-affirming "Shining On" - mixed by veteran
hit-making producer David Kahne - exhibits a hard-won resilience
in the face of disappointment and betrayal. If there is still
a slightly tragic air about Hatfield, it is balanced by this
sensibility.
"I feel really lucky to have made a living at this for so long,"
she says. "I love what I do; making my music brings me joy and
fulfillment, over and over again. And I'll continue to do it
until I don't love it anymore." Hatfield's artistic growth has
been paralleled in other realms as well. An esteemed lyricist,
she segues to prose with her upcoming autobiography, which will
be published by Wiley and Sons in 2009. And she continues to
expand her label, which released Frank Smith's Heavy Handed
Peace and Love in 2007 as well as her collaboration with
the band, Sittin' in a Tree, a six-song EP.
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Purchase Juliana Hatfield's Music
Online:
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