If you can't wait until February, amazon.com has preview audio clips of all tracks from Peace & Love. Also at amazon.co.uk
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:
- Peace and Love
- The End Of The War
- Why Can’t We Love Each Other
- Butterflies
- What Is Wrong
- Unsung
- Evan
- Let’s Go Home
- I Picked You Up
- Faith In Our Friends
- I’m Disappearing
- Dear Anonymous
Juliana has confirmed the names of the 12 tracks for her new album, Peace & Love - out on January 12 (now February 16):
- Peace and Love
- The End Of The War
- Why Can't We Love Each Other
- Butterflies
- What Is Wrong
- Unsung
- Evan
- Let's Go Home
- I Picked You Up
- Faith In Our Friends
- I'm Disappearing
- 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:
and 
) and September 29 in the US.
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')
"My new album will be released the first week in January"
posted today by Juliana on Twitter.
Juliana's 'honor system' download project is shortly to come offline. Grab the songs and donate before they go.
The spring late summer cleaning continues. Blogs, tweets and a bunch of guitars all going. Another day, another Gibson. This time, a ES335 TD is being sold on ebay. Juliana played this on a number of live shows in recent years as highlighted in the official messageboard thread.
Following the sale / giveaway of two guitars earlier this year, Juliana is thinking about letting go of her brown Firebrand SG. That's the SG. Those interested can respond on the official messageboard.
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?
Juliana has contributed We're Not In Charleston Anymore to a tribute album -Ciao My Shining Star - The Songs of Mark Mulcahy. Mulcahy was the frontman for Miracle Legion and Polaris. He continues to write songs, and raise two daughters following the death of his wife last year. Proceeds from the album (due on 29 September) will go directly to him. More info and the tracklisting (featuring Dinosaur Jr, Thom Yorke and Michael Stipe) at Icon vs Icon.
Prepare Paypal posture and head for Juliana's download page for yet more new songs - The Idea Of Me, That's What You Get For Loving Me and Broken Record, the latter available in two instrumental flavours - avec drum/bass and sans drums.
From Juliana's show last night supporting The Bangles. Video by Steve Latham. Juliana's messageboard has photos from the show taken by Steve and others.
In her recent unpublished book chapter Juliana mentioned sharing a stage with Bruce Springsteen - a moment captured on YouTube. Watch the singer from The Hold Steady go "basically, nuts, jumping up and down like a giddy kid."Don't watch Juliana avoiding the mike.
Juliana is playing a benefit show on June 27 at One Longfellow Square, Portland, Maine.
"Maybe the music industry had spat me out, but now Sarah had invited me back in. I should’ve been heartened and encouraged by being hand-picked for the tour. Sarah’s invitation meant that all the other stuff (album sales, chart positions, record company support) didn’t matter. It was me, my unpolished, unglamorous music, that mattered. My music had its own intrinsic value and it meant something to some people..."
Juliana on Lilith Fair and sharing a stage with The Boss in a new unpublished book chapter, now online at Juliana's blog. UPDATE - since the removal of Juliana's blogs the unpublished chapters have become, well, unpublished. For now at least they are though available on Juliana's MySpace blog.
Juliana's 2006 live compilation album The White Broken Line is now available as a digital download. Stores include iTunes in the UK and US, plus Amazon in the UK and US.