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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.
Starting in her teens, with her first band, the critically-acclaimed
Boston-based indie rock band 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. From the beginning she has distinguished herself as a pop/rock
artist with brains, determination, and an unwavering dedication
to her craft in the face of a rapidly-evolving music industry.
Hatfield made waves in the mid-nineties on Atlantic Records
with her modern rock hits "My Sister", "Spin The Bottle", and
"Universal Heartbeat", which reinforced her status as a respected,
uncompromising songwriter, guitar player, and producer with
impeccable pop instincts, a disdain for artifice, a completely
original voice, and a contrarian streak.
After leaving Atlantic in 1998, Hatfield was 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 ten best albums by Jon Pareles in the New
York Times. The Boston Globe called In Exile
Deo "a lush, brash collection that lashes Hatfield's formidable
alt-rock cred to irresistible pop hooks…smart, swaggering, gorgeously-written
and produced (by Hatfield) in sonic technicolor…the breakthrough
work of an artist at the peak of her powers".
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, seething with hooky,
garage-rock vitriol"- Time Out New York)
How To Walk Away is Hatfield's tenth album as a solo
artist (not including side projects like Some Girls, as well
as four Blake Babies albums). Amazingly, Hatfield's work improves
with each passing year.
How To Walk Away finds Hatfield's singing in top form.
"Finally," says Hatfield, "I feel like my voice has grown into
itself and I'm not struggling so much against its little-girl-ness.
It's sounding fuller and more grown-up, to reflect the woman
that I am, now."
HTWA 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 (who, like Hatfield, began her career in Boston
and had a modern rock hit in the '90's ("Mother Mother"), guested
on violin, and Jason Hatfield, Juliana's brother, played the
piano on two songs which he co-wrote.
"Jason's a great songwriter and musician, though he doesn't
do it for a living," says Juliana. "For this album, he gave
me these two fully fleshed-out demos with all the chord progressions
and also titles: 'Remember November' and 'Such A Beautiful Girl'.
So all I had to do was come up with words and melodies."
Sonically, the song is possibly Hatfield's first recorded power
ballad. "Yeah," she says, "we tried to be careful about not
letting it get too cheesy. We wanted to keep it fairly raw-
more like the Beatles than American Idol (with the sounds and
the mix) 'cause sometimes there's a really fine line between
the two, you know?"
The album was recorded at Stratosphere Sound, the downtown NYC
studio co-owned by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne), James
Iha (formerly of Smashing Pumpkins), and Andy Chase. Chase,
founding member- with Schlesinger- of revered alt-rock/pop band
Ivy and acclaimed producer (Ivy, Tahiti 80), had much to do
with the sound and feel of How To Walk Away, as producer.
His smooth, lush sensibility is a far cry- a full 180 degrees,
almost- from Hatfield's last full-length studio work, Made
In China. How To Walk Away is evocative, layered,
unhurried, and 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 Rolling Stones-meet-Sheryl
Crow-meets-old school Liz Phair groove of "Now I'm Gone", sung
(and played) by Hatfield in one inspired improvisational take.
Hatfield has always straddled the line between meticulously-composed
pop and scrappy rock- she has been characterized as a cross
between Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders) and Belinda Carlyle
(of the Go Go's). How To Walk Away has its share of unbridled
rock and roll moments- kiss offs and heavy guitars- but the
overall feel is smooth, rich, soothing and contemplative. The
songs and performances have been polished without sacrificing
any of the stark honesty or truth. In fact, this is some of
Hatfield's most candid writing 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, in that they're human."
Walking away- and the loneliness that sometimes results- is
a theme in these songs. Escape, and the difficulty and necessity
of doing so; moving on, learning from mistakes, enduring- all
factor in giving the album a certain gravity and poignancy.
A sense of inevitable and amost willful aloneness pervades this
collection of songs.
"I do feel very much alone," says Hatfield. "I always have.
I think it's part of my genetic makeup; I live in a kind of
self-enforced exile. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean,
I get a whole lot of work done when I'm alone and not tangled
up in the dramas and complexities of relationships. I feel wonderfully
free when I'm alone, but I pay for my freedom, sometimes, in
loneliness."
Hatfield has always written about troubled relationships- romantic
and otherwise- but rather than agonizing over a sad state of
affairs How To Walk Away seems to take a fatalistic
attitude. It is set in a vaguely purgatorial post-relationship-
or maybe pre-relationship- landscape. The protagonists of the
songs don't expect to find wisdom and serenity and forgiveness
at the end of every long, rocky road (there are no Hollywood
happy endings here) but at the same time they know that understanding
and sureness may come. These songs' characters press on- because
they must- with the full knowledge of all that has gone wrong
in their lives and all that cannot be repaired, only stepped
over, after having been resigned to the trash heap of experience.
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, in a volatile,
frightening, dysfunctional family situation.
Escape can be rejuvenating, exhilarating, and even triumphant,
as in "Now I'm Gone", with its concise, confident, matter-of-fact
chorus which says, simply: It was you or me So I left Now I'm
gone.
How To Walk Away is not all earnestness, however. Hatfield's
dry, biting sense of humour comes out in "Just Lust" ("It's
just lust; it doesn't mean I love you"), a sort of post-feminist
anthem that takes back, for women, a sentiment that men are
assumed to have claimed as their own. The song's message: Sometimes
girls, too, just want to get it on with no strings attached.
The song turns the idea of women as the emotional, needy sex
on its head, addressing an emotional, needy male.
Another song, "Shining On", was mixed by veteran hit-making
producer David Kahne (Kelly Clarkson, Paul McCartney, Sugar
Ray, the Strokes, Regina Spektor, the Bangles, Romeo Void, etc.
ad infinitum). The song's unsentimental insistence on remembering
the good rather than the bad is bittersweet but life-affirming,
and shows a hard-won resilience and a will to forge ahead after
disappointment and betrayal. "Every light in my mind goes shining
on/Every star at dawn goes shining on" could be a metaphor for
Hatfield's refusal to feel bitter or battered or cheated by
a fickle music marketplace that has seen Hatfield toiling in
relative obscurity while she does some of the best work in her
career.
"I feel really lucky to have made a living at this for so long,"
says Hatfield. "And I generally believe that where I am is where
I'm supposed to be. The bottom line is 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."
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