The 4th track from Whatever, My Love to get the pre-release streaming treatment is I'm Shy - another of the re-recorded versions of songs previously released on mp3 a decade back.
The album's out on general release tomorrow of course.
A bunch of the initial reviews for the new album:
Whatever, My Love arrives with an extra bit of anticipation from Hatfield enthusiasts. And, much like its forebear, the album's 12 tunes are tight, tidy pop-rockers, presented in her characteristic straightforward-yet-slightly-skewed manner. See the needlepoint guitar that tears through the otherwise unadorned power-pop chugger "Push Pin," or how, on "Wood," her voice virtually mimics every twist of the circular chord progression.
4/5
Richard Bienstock, Billboard
While Whatever, My Love certainly sounds fresh by 2015 standards, the album still succeeds in bringing longtime listeners back to the time when “Alternative” truly meant something.
Hatfield has always had a knack of taking a simple mid-tempo song and making it infectious. The group accomplish that with the head-swaying "Now That I Have Found You", and the hook-filled earworm "If I Could". It's a pop rock song that will stick in your brain well after the album is over.
8/10
The Juliana Hatfield Three 2015 US dates move into April.
They are part of a double bill with Buffalo Tom on the 17th in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Details at The Historic Theater.
See the tour dates page for the list of previously announced headline shows in February and March.
Juliana, on the appeal of Guitar-Bass-Drums trios and keyboards:
It’s kind of classic and simple and hard to really fuck it up. It’s like there’s a comfort and simplicity in that sort of lineup, although lately I’ve been playing a lot more keyboards on the recordings. I’ve been getting back to playing keyboards. I just think it’s more fun to play a guitar live, because you can swing it around and bash on it and move. But with a keyboard you’re more rooted to one place. Also, I like how the guitar strings can bend, but the keyboard is more stationary and static, and you can’t … in a live setting, it’s kind of restraining.
Read the whole interview with Len Comaratta at Consequence of Sound.
American Laundromat Records are now streaming a third song from the forthcoming Juliana Hatfield Three album, Whatever, My Love.
Wood is one of two bonafide all new songs on the record.
Juliana calls the song "the opposite of 'I Wanna Sex You Up'" and describes it as being "about numbness and dissociation – feeling like a block of wood." Speaking to Rolling Stone, she says:
There are mood swings in both mind and body. Like I've said before in songs like 'I Got No Idols,' sometimes 'I don't like to be touched.' How do you handle it when you feel dead and numb? When your significant other wants affection and you don't? It's complicated and mysterious, biological and psychological and emotional.
It sounds very much like a Juliana Hatfield Three song should in 2015. Good work.
Dates at Solana Beach, CA (tickets), Atlanta, GA, and a second Philadelphia, PA show have been added to the upcoming Juliana Hatfield Three Become What You Are US tour.
Update Feb 4 - There's another show added at the Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte, NC on March 23.
Update Feb 5 - Another one at Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC on March 24.
The updated schedule:
February, 2015
26 Port City Music Hall, Portland, ME
27 The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA
March, 2015
1 Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
2 Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia, PA
3 Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia, PA
4 Black Cat, Washington, DC
6 Music Box Supper Club, Cleveland, OH
7 Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL
8 Turf Club, St. Paul, MN
11 Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA
12 Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
14 City Winery, Napa, CA
15 The Chapel, San Francisco, CA
16 Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, CA
18 Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA
22 Terminal West, Atlanta, GA
23 Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte, NC
24 Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC
From Juliana's official site:
Juliana’s 2011 14-song album “There’s Always Another Girl” is about to be back in stock! You can pre-order it here now for the bargain price of $8.00, plus shipping/handling. Please note that there are separate shipping/handling prices and “buy-now” buttons for North American and overseas orders.
Pre-orders: julianahatfield.com/taag.htm
Related: this site's track by track review from 2011.
American Laundromat Records are streaming another song from the forthcoming Juliana Hatfield Three album Whatever, My Love.
Ordinary Guy is another reworked version of a song previously released in Juliana's 'Honor Download Experiment' a decade ago.
A great set of photos by David Young from Saturday night's Juliana Hatfield Three performance for the Hot Stove Cool Music benefit show at the Paradise Rock Club.
See also David's photos of other artists on the bill including Mike Gent, Jen Trynin and Tanya Donelly.
Click / tap to enlarge, obvs:
See also an alternate YouTube video of Supermodel.
From last night's return of The Juliana Hatfield Three for the Hot Stove Cool Music event at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston.
Michael Marotta at Vanyaland reports a four song set comprising Supermodel, My Sister, If I Could, and I Got No Idols.
Juliana soundchecking for tonight's comeback in Boston via Kay Hanley.
Who'd have thought she'd be playing this song? ;)
Juliana, interviewed by Kenneth Partridge for Nylon:
I’m nostalgic, but I’m more nostalgic for the 1970s, when I was a child growing up...That’s the era I really connect with. The music, the television, the movies, the fashion, the décor: The ‘70s is my favorite era. When I think of the ‘90s, I think of really bad fashion—like, a terrible fashion era. Not great TV. I don’t think it’s the best. I’m not personally nostalgic for it, but I understand that some people are, and if I can go out there and make those people happy while playing some music with my friends and having fun today, then that’s great. Then we’ll all be happy.
Some of you will know that I've pondered pulling the site over the last couple of years. I figure that across the web, Twitter and Facebook, Juliana fans are well served these days. News posted here is often just an echo of what most of us already know and the idea of an unofficial fan site is a bit outdated.
However, people have continued to tell me that they enjoy visiting here and as there have been some great contributors who have helped archive fan memorabilia spanning Juliana's near 30 years of music it would be a shame to see it go. It's a testament to Juliana's longevity that we're all still around talking about her art in our own little parts of the internet.
To continue I've needed to upgrade this site as it was becoming difficult to maintain. For those interested this is now a modern responsive Squarespace 7 site using, for now at least, a largely unmodified template. If it's unusable on low memory devices / slow connections please let me know.
Some of the page header images are adaptations of original photographs by David Young which I've always liked.
To mark the new look, here's a random bit of audio from the archives - Juliana reading Henry David Thoreau's "Contemplation by Walden Pond" for the BBC's Mark Radcliffe show 20 odd years ago.
If any of you are going to see the live return of the Juliana Hatfield Three tomorrow, have a great time. Happy New Year.
Craig - site admin
Tour dates!
February, 2015
26 Port City Music Hall, Portland, ME
27 The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA
March, 2015
1 Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
3 Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia, PA
4 Black Cat, Washington, DC
6 Music Box Supper Club, Cleveland, OH
7 Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL
8 Turf Club, St. Paul, MN
11 Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA
12 Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
14 City Winery, Napa, CA
15 The Chapel, San Francisco, CA
16 Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, CA
Any extra dates will be added to the tour dates page here when announced but you'd be wise to keep track of Juliana's official site and social media for updates.
The Juliana Hatfield Three will return to the live stage for the first time in two decades on January 10, 2015.
They are part of the bill for the Hot Stove Cool Music show at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. This is a fundraiser event for Foundation To Be Named Later.
There are general admission and VIP tickets available now.
Here we go then. This track is taken from the forthcoming Juliana Hatfield Three album, Whatever, My Love.
It's a new recording of a song first heard in the 'honor downloads experiment' a decade ago.
Juliana:
I have always loved this song and I always wanted it to be done up properly and although this is not shockingly or radically different than the demo, I really love it.
Folk over on the PledgeMusic comments recall Juliana performing this song at the Bush Hall shows in London back in 2006. The website you're reading now exists because of those shows.
The song is rather special, isn't it?
The forthcoming album from the reunited Juliana Hatfield Three will be titled Whatever, My Love.
Loving the deference to the 1993 artwork.
We have a scheduled release date of February 17, 2015.
Perhaps a little unexpectedly (given Juliana's run of solo self-released albums), the band are signed to American Laundromat Records, who now have the album listed:
The twelve songs on "Whatever, My Love" are unsentimental, funny, and honest. Hatfield, humble as always, acknowledges that, "We haven’t totally reinvented the wheel or anything" with this new album and that the recordings exhibit "stuff I am sort of known for, I guess": a guitar-centric melodicism, and lyrical examinations of emotional confusion. "But I am a lot more confident now than I was then with the first album. And I had more fun recording this one."
Hatfield’s songs’ subjects still don’t know why people are the way they are. But the music is fresh and inspired, gorgeous and punk, sleazy and sweet; fully present and alive. With their new album, the Juliana Hatfield Three has in a sense responded to its former directive to "become what you are" by making an album that is exactly what it wants to be, identifiable in its acceptance--and celebration--of the unknowable and unsolvable.
American Laundromat are now taking pre-orders which include bundle options for buttons, a decal and a t-shirt.
The shirt is a different design to that offered by Juliana through PledgeMusic and is available unbundled from the CD for $24 plus postage.
The tracklist:
- Invisible
- Now That I Have Found You
- Ordinary Guy
- If Only We Were Dogs
- I'm Shy
- Dog On A Chain
- If I Could
- Push Pin
- Blame The Stylist
- I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands
- Wood
- Parking Lots
A sad face emoji for the moment you realise that Blame The Stylist and Wood appear to be the only previously unheard songs here.
The following have been heard in some form before:
1,2,3,5,7 - first released during Juliana's Download Experiment in 2004-2005
4 - from Sittin' In A Tree..., a 2007 EP recorded with Frank Smith
6,8,12 - from Wild Animals, a 2013 solo acoustic album
10 - from Get There, a 2013 Minor Alps Album
They are all new recordings though and let's not forget that the involvement of Tom Beaujour in the studio with Minor Alps helped transform June 6th to Away Again last year.
Also, February isn't far off now is it? Good times ahead.