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Juliana - TV Blogger

"TV is not reality. Even reality TV is not reality. Cameras and microphones and lights trailing a person during a dramatic, difficult period of her life is not reality; it's something else. It's commerce. It's exploitation. It's entertainment."

Juliana discusses fame, loneliness and reality TV in her take on VH1's Celebrity Rehab show. Read the article at Stereogum.

There are some interesting views on Heidi Fleiss's appearance, not least as Fleiss is currently also 'starring' in the UK show Celebrity Big Brother. 

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The Return Of The Blog

"One thing I’ve noticed is that people who look good on TV often have either very small heads or very large ones.

I was standing behind a former MTV veejay in a coffee shop yesterday afternoon and he had a skull the size of a coconut."

After wiping the slate clean in July, Juliana is blogging again.  Instead of themes based around her songs as before, her new one suggests just-like-the-rest-of-the-internet random bloggy irrelevance.   Read more on 'Hello' at Juliana's official site.

 

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Peace and Love - Juliana's Track by Track Notes

The new homepage at julianahatfield.com"I always try to learn from painful experiences, and to forgive myself and others - and to move on, with an open heart and mind. At some point one realises that anger is a real waste of energy, it's draining and damaging, and one learns to deliberately let go of it, and the letting go brings a lightness, a new freedom and hopefulness that may unfortunately be hard to sustain at all times.  Peace and love are ideals toward which we reach."

 

Juliana, on the title song from Peace & Love.  Read her track by track comments on the whole album at the newly revamped official site.

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Peace and Love - Artwork, Info, New Release Date

Juliana Hatfield - Peace and Love

The release date for Peace and Love has been pushed back to February 16, 2010. The full press release follows. Big Hassle (Juliana's publicists) have also updated their artist bio based on the new liner notes.

 PRESS RELEASE

Peace And Love, Juliana Hatfield’s latest album, will be released on February 16, 2010 on Ye Olde Records. Hatfield, of course, has a long history of DIY endeavors – from her trailblazing days with Boston indie band the Blake Babies to her recent releases on Ye Olde Records, the label she founded in 2005 – but with Peace And Love she reaches a new level of independence. She produced and engineered the album herself and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, piano, harmonica and drum machine.

“I’ve produced records before but I was always in a studio with professional engineers. So it was definitely a learning process for me,” says Hatfield, who was ready to strip things down after her critically acclaimed 2008 album, How To Walk Away, which was a full studio production. “I always like to try things I’ve never done before and I‘d been yearning to record myself.”  

Hatfield had just purchased her brother’s eight-track digital recorder and moved into a Cambridge apartment with a back room that had excellent natural acoustics, so the time was right. “I was able to follow every instinct without worrying that anyone was going to think it was a kooky idea,” she recalls. “I just wanted to do something simple.”

The result is an incredibly intimate collection of songs, expertly capturing the loneliness and collateral damage borne of broken relationships yet adamantly refusing to remain broken. In the liner notes, Boston Phoenix music writer James Parker gives it a name: “Survivor-music – because even at their most palpitatingly fragile, your songs have always been built to last. Well-made, strong-boned, fit to be played on streetcorners and station platforms.”

Just as Hatfield stripped down the recording process, the characters that populate Peace And Love are ready to shed their convoluted lives. The lilting “Why Can’t We Love Each Other” answers its own question by acknowledging that love is a choice: “we can make our lives a song/will it be a blues or a hymn/a dirge or a psalm/it could be so simple.” But there’s the rub, of course: it could be so simple…if it weren’t for our propensity to muck things up.

From the plucked Elizabethan chords that introduce the opening “Peace And Love” and the feedback-drenched “What Is Wrong” to “Unsung,” Hatfield’s first-ever instrumental, and the closing “Dear Anonymous,” written from the point of view of a victim who finds empathy for her stalker, the collection is both compelling and surprising. “Faith In Our Friends” celebrates those who “think you’re just right the way you are” while Hatfield gains fresh perspective on her complex relationship with longtime friend Evan Dando on the exquisite, ethereal “Evan.”

Peace And Love is Hatfield’s 11th solo album and follows last year’s How To Walk Away, which was hailed as “rueful and gorgeous,” by Entertainment Weekly, which gave the album an A-. “After 20 years, the songstress still packs a wallop on her 10th album, featuring edgy tales of heartbreak sung with that classic sweetness,” said Newsweek, naming it a “Checklist” pick of the week upon its release while Spin pronounced it “vital,” awarding it three out of four stars. Her autobiography, entitled When I Grow Up, was published by Wiley & Sons in September 2008.

Hatfield first came to prominence in her teens as a founding member of the Blake Babies. After four independent albums with the group, she signed to Atlantic as a solo artist and had a string of modern-rock hits (including “My Sister,” “Spin The Bottle” and  “Universal Heartbeat”). She left the label in 1998, signing to Zoe Records (a Rounder Records imprint) and releasing four well-regarded albums, including 2004’s In Exile Deo, named as one of that year’s 10 best albums by The New York Times’ Jon Pareles. In 2005, Hatfield came full circle, returning to her independent roots and founding Ye Olde Records.

The track listing for Peace and Love is as follows:   

 

 

 

  1. Peace and Love
  2. The End Of The War
  3. Why Can’t We Love Each Other
  4. Butterflies
  5. What Is Wrong
  6. Unsung
  7. Evan
  8. Let’s Go Home
  9. I Picked You Up
  10. Faith In Our Friends
  11. I’m Disappearing
  12. Dear Anonymous
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Peace and Love - Tracklisting

Juliana has confirmed the names of the 12 tracks for her new album, Peace & Love - out on January 12  (now February 16): 

  1. Peace and Love
  2. The End Of The War
  3. Why Can't We Love Each Other
  4. Butterflies
  5. What Is Wrong
  6. Unsung
  7. Evan
  8. Let's Go Home
  9. I Picked You Up
  10. Faith In Our Friends
  11. I'm Disappearing
  12. Dear Anonymous 

A version of Butterflies was included in the Daytrotter session released earlier this year. Confirmation that the gorgeous I Picked You Up is also on the new album will no doubt please many of us.  The song originally premiered in demo form this time last year and was also on the US only download EP Live at Lime:


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New Album Title - 'Peace and Love'

Juliana has confirmed the correct title of the new album is "Peace and Love" (a name which had appeared on some of the recent mp3 demo downloads) and is due on January 12 (update: the release date is now February 16).  This, further to a report in Paste Magazine which got the title of the new and previous albums wrong (and which they have since corrected). Their report that the album contains a song named after Evan Dando is therefore tbc. (UPDATE Oct 5 - The song is confirmed as 'Evan')

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Juliana Pulls Blogs

At Juliana's request all of her blog posts (which date back to early 2008) have been removed from An Arm and A Leg and the mirror at Myspace.

UPDATE - 4 August 2009 - Juliana has tweeted that new blogs are coming soon with (as yet undefined) different themes and content than before.  Politics? Gossip? Recipies?

 

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