my new secret lo-fi acoustic solo album, "Wild Animals", is officially available now
— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) September 12, 2013
The album is now appearing on the digital outlets including your iTunes.
Looks like you can still order the CD at julianahatfield.com too.
Some sad news.
Some of you may have known fellow fan Mary Haddon.
Allison Hardin has contacted this site:
I am saddened to share the news that Mary Haddon passed away yesterday after her battle against breast cancer.
One of the biggest joys of the last year of her life was the opportunity to meet Juliana Hatfield; Mary was an avid Juliana fan and had followed her for years.
You may recall that Mary wrote a heartwarming account of her trip to Boston in Summer 2012 to see Juliana's PledgeMusic shows at the Q Division Studios. You can read the account where she mentions the moment Juliana played 'Shining On' here. (scroll to July 3, 2012)
Thoughts and best wishes to Mary's family and friends.
Juliana:
I was living in a studio apartment in Allston, Massachusetts, which is sort of like a student ghetto of cheap apartments. Evan Dando was sort of crashing there. He had nothing to do with it, but I just remember he was around. And I was trying to write something catchy and accessible, but not in a crass, commercial way. I just came up with those four chords that are the verse, and then it sort of ended up not having a chorus.
I've always been in this sort of perpetual state of existential longing. I feel like something's missing. I almost feel like I have a twin who died at birth but no one ever told me that the twin existed. And with this song, I was trying to explore the idea of a sister who I never had. In the beginning, that seemed like a really nice idea. I had two brothers, but I never had a sister. But then the song ended up being kind of sad. It was more of a longing for a sister who was never nice to me, or a relationship lacking the things that I wanted from it.
SPIN has a lengthy article revisiting 1993's My Sister featuring quotes from many including members of The Juliana Hatfield Three and, yes, the Violent Femmes and the Del Fuegos.
You don't want to miss this one.
a great piece on Become What You Are: http://t.co/vg23YDEwuw ("defying any pop expectations of a winning narrative")
— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) August 21, 2013
Elizabeth Barker:
There wasn’t much opportunity for daydream or the invention of more extraordinary selves in Become What You Are. Instead Juliana showed you her reality and all the ways it let her down. Some of her angst was existential, like on “For The Birds” (the dead-bird one, the one where she finds a dying bird in the first chorus, and in the second chorus argues that “Humans only wreck the world/They’d kill your whole family for a string of pearls”). A few of the songs were painfully personal: “Addicted” was at least partly about her anorexia (“The skeleton trees remind me of me/They got no leaves/To make the air we breathe”), while “Little Pieces” was a breakup anthem stripped of any cheery delusions of romantic grandeur (“Feels like a heartbreak/But it’s nothing near that great”). And several tracks served as social commentary, taking on everything from rape (“A Dame with a Rod”) to the false promise of rock-star worship (“I Got No Idols”) to the emptiness of the fashion industry (the album-opening “Supermodel,” on which she warns that “Those magazines end up in the trash,” stretching out the lyric’s last syllable for eight weird and gorgeous seconds).
Read the whole article at Popdose.
Barsuk Records have released the track list for Get There by Minor Alps (Juliana Hatfield & Matthew Caws). You can also now download the first track (Buried Plans) from their site.
- Buried Plans
- I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands
- Far From The Roses
- If I Wanted Trouble
- Maxon
- Wish You Were Upstairs
- Mixed Feelings
- Radio Static
- Lonely Low
- Waiting For You
- Away Again
Barsuk:
Along with sharing lead vocals and writing credit on all of Get There's eleven tracks, Matthew and Juliana played every instrument beside the drums, conjuring up an ever-shifting range of sounds and feelings. It's not just the timbre of the voices and the shared vision of their musical explorations, but the emotional tone of Caws and Hatfield's songs and lyrics that blends so seamlessly. Their attraction to themes of restless solitude and constant longing have always been a compelling part of their individual repertoires, and Minor Alps expresses an ageless existential yearning tempered by hard-fought wisdom, maturity, or maybe just acceptance of certain eternal truths.
Much anticipation at liveontomorrow hq for this record.
If you've been paying attention to the odd tweet from various parties since the beginning of this year, you'll know that Juliana has been working with Nada Surf's Matthew Caws.
They're now ready to go public.
They're calling themselves Minor Alps and releasing Get There - an eleven track album of songs written together on October 29, 2013.
There are live dates in the US during November:
08 Neptune Theater - Seattle, WA
09 Hawthorne Theater - Portland, OR
11 The Independent - SF, CA
12 Echoplex - LA, CA
14 Soda Bar - San Diego, CA
16 Cedar Cultural Ctr - Minneapolis, MN
17 Schubas - Chicago, IL
19 Black Cat - Washington, DC
20 Bowery Ballroom - NY, NY
22 World Cafe Live - Philadelphia, PA
23 The Sinclair - Boston, MA
Fan pre-sale for the November tour dates starts Wednesday noon eastern time: http://t.co/WtdFVF2jOz General on sale is Friday, August 16th.
— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) August 12, 2013
From the bio at Paradigm Agency:
In the year before they recorded these songs (mostly with Caws’ old friend Tom Beaujour at his studio in Hoboken, NJ) Hatfield and Caws wrote together in brief but intense bursts at his studio in Brooklyn, at her place in Cambridge, MA, and at Caws’ current home in Cambridge, England. Those sessions themselves inspired one of the songs, as Matthew explains: “We were hanging out and working on ideas for a few days in England and it was such a positive thing that I really missed it when it was over. We spent most of the time working together, but sometimes we’d go to separate rooms to write. ‘Wish You Were Upstairs’ is about energy by proxy—how collaborating with someone, or just being industrious at the same time, can be comforting and inspiring, particularly if they’re just fifteen feet away.”
“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Juliana interjects. “I wanted us to have a mind meld, a musical one, because I know there are these barriers between people and it takes a long time to get close to someone. We were just getting to know each other while we were trying to write songs together. When we first got together writing, I felt very vulnerable because I usually do it alone. It’s a delicate balance to go to that vulnerable place yet do it in front of another person. That was the challenge, but the more we did it, the more it felt natural.”
Choosing a name for their self-sufficient combo became one of those long mulled-over decisions that ultimately get resolved in an instant. Decades ago, Matthew’s family had purchased a cheap mountainside cottage in France, with no running water or electricity, where he spent several summers as a child. The mountain overlooking the region, the Mont Ventoux, while technically part of the Alps, isn’t referred to as such because there are no other mountains nearby. Matthew described it as a “minor alp” to his friend, photographer Autumn de Wilde, years ago, who immediately said “great band name, write that down.” So, as Matthew puts it, “in the tradition of Iron Butterfly or Led Zeppelin, band names that contain contradictions, we chose Minor Alps—humble mountains.”
On a more metaphorical level, Hatfield believes, the moniker suits them: “Maybe the whole world doesn’t know who we are, but the people who do really appreciate us” – making Minor Alps nothing less than a major event.
The official home for the project is minoralps.tumblr.com. Also on Facebook.
Ooh.
Juliana performed a live acoustic show today, broadcast via Livestream as an exclusive for PledgeMusic subscribers.
There was an unscheduled break halfway through when the stream broke down completely, and although some reported further problems those of us lucky ones without such issues saw a stream that was of a decent quality and Juliana sounding great.
This is the first time she has done anything like this and she seemed keen on feedback with a view to doing more. She said it felt odd not to see or hear her audience response. This, and indeed the whole atmosphere, sound and actual physical experience simply do not translate when the audience isn't in the room. For those of us privileged to have seen Juliana perform in person in recent years this virtual event didn't compare. At all.
So it was best not to think of it as a substitute for an actual gig, be thankful for what it was and as the set was largely made up of requests sent in by pledgees prior to the show, enjoy those live rarity treats.
The setlist:
- Taxicab
- Hurt Me
- Learn To Fly
- I Picked You Up
- Make It Home
- Everybody Loves Me But You
- Hotels
- Until Tomorrow
- Choose Drugs
- Table For One
- For The Birds
- Law Of Nature
- The End Of The War
The tracklist for Juliana's new album, released today via PledgeMusic (subscribers only):
- Sleep
- June 6th
- Spit In The Wind
- Parking Lots
- Dog On A Chain
- Hurt Me
- Tracks
- Push Pin
- Or So They Say
- Love Is Like The Wind
- Never Beg
It is titled 'Wild Animals', acoustic and very much a solo effort, similar to the sound of the Peace & Love album.
It's available to download as mp3 and...drumroll...FLAC.
Juliana says to pledgers:
I am eternally grateful and so happy and lucky to be able to keep making my music for you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed assembling it in my little back room with the bird songs coming in through the windows.
Currently this is a PledgeMusic exclusive but as per the last two projects we can expect a general release within a few weeks. UPDATE - the release date is September 10. Pre-orders are being taken at julianahatfield.com.
as posted yesterday on the Instagram by occasional Juliana photographer and remixer Brad Walsh.
I used my teenage diaries as an archival source for this essay I wrote on the legacy of @julianahatfield's Hey Babe http://t.co/oLeP8ZBLg3
— Laura Fisher (@termitetree) July 1, 2013
Laura Fisher:
Hey Babe’s landscape of feelings — self-disgust, second-guessing, depression, cautious optimism — have no place in a reception model that hinged strictly on “empowerment.” If Hey Babe’s tone of general malcontent has endeared the album to alienated listeners over the past 21 years, it has also kept the album from wider recognition. This reflects our cultural preference for “vehement passions” over “minor feelings.” As theorist Sianne Ngai notes of the Western literary tradition, “something about the cultural canon itself seems to prefer higher passions and emotions — as if minor or ugly feelings were not only incapable of producing ‘major’ works, but somehow disabled the works they do drive from acquiring canonical distinction.” This explains a lot about Hatfield’s disappearance from the alternative rock narrative.
An outstanding article. Read the whole thing at The New Inquiry.
100%
Juliana's new fan funded project launched today.
A whole brand spanking new album is in the works.
Juliana:
This is my third Pledge Music project and I am optimistically jumping into it because I have been so encouraged by your energy and your generosity and your many ongoing kindnesses. I am excited to bring this new batch of songs to life. I am going to make a mostly (but not totally) acoustic album but I am not going to overthink or overproduce any performances. It will have the loose energy of, say, my album “Bed”, without all the distortion (but maybe with some) and with more prettiness.
The 'incentives' include an online acoustic performance on Aug 10, more original artwork, a signed guitar, an unworn high school varsity jacket (!) and a whole bunch of back catalogue on cd.
There's also some tour books, and unreleased demo / master tapes - but most if not all of these high ticket items are already gone having been snapped up in seconds by the eager kings and queens of browser refreshing.
Tantalisingly Juliana goes on to say:
Throughout this process, as I work on the new recordings, I will be sharing other music with you that you might not have ever heard before, music I have recently unearthed from my vast archives.
Marvellous.
tomorrow, 2 p.m., EST (eastern standard time[massachusetts time]) we will launch my new pledgemusic.com peoplefunded project
— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) June 1, 2013
That's 7pm British Summer Time, 6pm UTC.
As spotted by Andrew on the This Is The Sound group, there is a new* song titled Miles Away available to listen at Juliana's PledgeMusic profile page.
Bring on tomorrow.
*it's a new old song
Juliana's new album project launches tomorrow (Sunday, June 2). While we wait, here's some further footage from last year's Melbourne shows with Evan Dando as uploaded to YouTube this week by Evie170.
See also Bit Part, All My Life, and It's About Time.
Thanks to Carlos for the tip.
Andrew Youssef:
I follow Hatfield on Twitter and was intrigued when she announced a Pledge Music campaign for fans to fund her new album of cover songs. One of the limited packages was a fifteen minute phone call with Hatfield for fifty dollars. I immediately got out my Visa card and made the donation as I knew it would sell out. The chance to speak with one of my favorite artists and guitar heroes was a no-brainer.
Ironically, at the time she was supposed to call was the day my chemotherapy ran later than usual. So I have a voice mail on my phone from Hatfield saying she would try back later. When I finally did talk to her, my anxieties melted away as it was effortless talking to her about guitar pedals, working with Josh Freese on her album "Only Everything" and how Nada Surf were criminally underrated.
Read the whole article at OC Weekly.
Andrew links to his photos from last year's Q Division shows in his piece. You can view some of his other work at amateurchemist.com.
Low Times Podcast:
Maggie Serota sits down with entertainment lawyer John P. Strohm to chat about his roots in the Boston music scene of the late 80s, founding The Blake Babies with ex-girlfriend Freda Love and Juliana Hatfield and playing in The Lemonheads with Evan Dando. He also discusses the shift from trying to eke out a living as an indie musician to becoming an attorney specializing in working with artists.
It's a very good interview and well worth a listen for any Blake Babies / Juliana fan.
You can hear it via the episode page at Low Times.
John's interview is the last section of the episode and begins after the 1 hour 4 minute mark.
rock and roll! twitter.com/julianahatfiel…
— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) March 10, 2013
For those who don't follow Juliana on Twitter, she posted the above tweet earlier this month, plus others from the studio in New Jersey, where she continues to work with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf.
No further news has emerged on this project which doesn't seem to be following the fan funded route so far.
The two have worked together before of course. They've guested on each other's albums and Nada Surf's Fruit Fly featured on Juliana's eponymous covers album last year.