A good Q&A with Ted Chase at QRO Magazine. Juliana, on Ordinary Girl from the new album:

“Ordinary” in quotation marks. ‘Ordinary’ doesn’t exist.

This girl’s boyfriend is such a fuck-up that she’s so sick of the drama that she wants someone quote-unquote ‘ordinary’. So ordinary becomes the fantasy. The fantasy is someone who’s not a fuck-up.

I’m a musician who – I go on tour for months of a time, I pack suitcases and I live out of hotels, and I go on stage at eleven o’clock every night and play this loud, electrified music. To me, sometimes that gets so tiring & draining that I fantasize about office work, that I fantasize about getting up and going to an office at nine every day, and then going home at five every day.

The fantasy is the quote-unquote ‘ordinary life,’ but I also know that ‘normal’ doesn’t really exist. Everybody’s insane.

Also, on the question of inspiration from other 90s reunions of late:

I was kind of inspired by– When I heard that Veruca Salt was getting back together and making an album, and they sold out their show in Boston, I felt like, ‘Hey, I wanna do it!’ I felt this competitive instinct, like, ‘Hey, if they can make a record and get back together and sell out in Boston, I wanna do it too!’ The competitive instinct…

Chad Berndtson, for The Patriot Ledger:

I had planned to ask you about why it was the right time to create new music for the Juliana Hatfield Three, but it sounds like you had the music first and the Three just became the project. Still, why a new album? That you were reuniting with this band probably would be enough to get folks out.

Juliana:

I like to be productive and put out new music, for sure. I like to be engaged and produce new stuff. As we got to thinking about a new record, I was thinking, if we’re going to tour, we might as well have something new to offer people and keep the thing from being purely a nostalgia trip. We’re updating the sound in the 21st century and giving some new energy to the old songs.

Another recommended interview here. Mike Mettler of The Sound Bard asks a series of questions different from the norm, covering sound fidelity, melodies from childhood, Juliana's lead guitar ambitions, and more.

Mettler: Is sequencing still important to you? I feel like I need to hear this record in a specific order.

Hatfield: It is really important to me. I care about it a lot. I still think of albums as albums, you know? I put a lot of time into sequencing, even though I know a lot of people don’t listen in that order. But it matters to me, yeah.

Mettler: The first line of the album is, “You make me feel like I’m invisible” [“Invisible”] and the very last line is, “So many metaphors for pain” [“Parking Lots”]. I figure that had to be a very deliberate choice on your part — how this story begins and ends.

Hatfield: Putting “Invisible” first was a very conscious choice. I guess it has more to do with my place in my legacy, or non-legacy. It’s a lot about that. And I guess the “metaphors for pain” thing applies to all of my music, but I don’t really want to talk about it with anyone. I make songs so I don’t have to talk about it.

Juliana, interviewed by Matt Wardlaw for Cleveland Scene, on the origin of The Juliana Hatfield Three name:

It’s kind of a terrible name, I think I was just trying to make a play on jazz or something kind of old time like that, a jazzy kind of name. I guess I was maybe trying to be funny, you know? But it was a way of establishing that yes, this is a band, but yes, I am the leader and yes, I am the front person. It kind of gave me an out once I wanted to break up the band.

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This interview at Salon is a good one. The journalist Annie Zaleski is clearly a fan and has asked some of the questions I think a lot of us would. For instance, I feel that one of the most contentious re-recordings on Whatever, My Love is I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands, a song I associate with Minor Alps and which I don't think works as well without Matthew. Zaleski may not agree with that but is curious to hear why Juliana reworked it. Juliana:

The way Matthew [Caws] and I recorded was, we wrote these songs and then we went to the studio not having really clear, detailed visions of how the songs would turn out. We kind of let the recordings take shape in the studio. As a result of that, the Minor Alps version of “I Don’t Know What to Do with My Hands” turned out a certain way. And then after some time passed, and I went back to listen to it, I was unsatisfied. I liked what Matthew and I did, but I feel like it’s not quite right. I needed to record it again to see if it would do anything else for me; I thought it needed another chance.

When I went in with Todd and Dean, we had a different approach. We went in as a band to try to just jam it out, and it has a more groovy, strummed feel. And I guess that’s how I started to envision the song after Minor Alps recorded it. And with Todd and Dean, I was able to get that new version down. It was really just a personal goal to get a version that I felt more satisfied with.

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Before the start of the Juliana Hatfield Three tour next week in Portland, Juliana has spoken to Kathleen Pierce of Bangor Daily News:

I would bring a transistor radio to bed with me and listen to all the pop hits of the ’70s, I was young and very impressionable. Soaking all this stuff up, it got into my blood.

Bands like ELO [Electric Light Orchestra], Diana Ross, the song from Mahogany, The Little River Band, ABBA, that’s the stuff that got into my blood, my chords and my melodies …The Carpenters, Eagles, the Steve Miller Band.

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Jed Gottlieb, for the Boston Herald:

When you average an album a year, you don’t generally have time for nostalgia. But “Whatever, My Love” found Hatfield looking back.

“For years, I said I’d never do one of those tours where you’d play the old album,” she said ahead of her hometown Feb. 27 show at the Sinclair.

“But I got older and my brain shifted into positivity. I listened to the Three’s first album (1994’s “Become What You Are”), and I liked it. I don’t always have that reaction when I hear old albums.

“Getting back with (drummer) Todd (Philips) and (bassist) Dean (Fisher) reminded me it feels really good to plug in, be loud and rock,” she added. “I’ve missed that.”

From a feature - 'The Juliana Hatfield Three: Still Becoming What They Are' - by Stephen M. Deusner for Paste::

If Whatever My Love sounds like a direct sequel to Become What You Are, it might be because several of these songs were written in the mid to late 1990s, when Hatfield was at the peak of her popularity. She recorded “If I Could,” “Now That I’ve Found You” and “Invisible” as demos, with Philips on drums, but they never fit on any of her subsequent albums. “I loved those songs and I didn’t want to forget about them. Todd was actually the one who suggested I bring them back for this record. He made me remember how much I liked them.”

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A feature by Patrick Foster in USA Today:

The focus of the shows will firmly be on the music and, befitting a reunion tour, the group's better-known work will take center stage. "We're actually going to be playing the Become What You Are album in its entirety. That's the first order of business. After that we're going to do some songs from the new album and some older stuff from throughout the years." As for crowd expectations, "it will be a nice kind of mixture" she predicts. "People that will be there for nostalgic reasons, and I think there will be some younger people."

OMG, SAUSAGES, HILKEN, BRAS, LOL, etc

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From an article by Jim Sullivan for WBUR's The ARTery:

At various points, Hatfield, now 47, has moved away from music, or at least, has talked about doing so. “I feel like I should be doing something more grown-up or something more respectable,” she says, “but I just feel yanked back over and over again. It’s like being in love with someone who drives you crazy. You think you want to get away, and you try to get away and you just keep getting pulled back. It’s almost like it’s out of my hands. I can’t quit it. I keep trying, but I just can’t fight it anymore.”

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Today!

Whatever, My Love - the new album from The Juliana Hatfield Three - the kind of follow up to 1993's Become What You Are - is released today on American Laundromat Records.

If you weren't part of the PledgeMusic gang who received the album last week you should be able to find it from your retailer of choice, direct from American Laundromat and as a download on your iTunes in most territories.

American Laundromat are currently streaming the whole thing too.

The Boston Globe have reviewed the record today, not altogether favourably. Juliana has had her say on what they said:

Post by Juliana Hatfield (Official).

And, because we're all 2015 now, here's a video review by The Daily Guru:

There will be a liveontomorrow.co.uk review ™ in due course, but not just yet. I want to give it several more listens.

Lesley Gore, famed for songs such as It's My Party and You Don't Own Me died yesterday at the age of 68.

She recorded those two songs when she was 16 and 17. Extraordinary.

You Don't Own Me has been covered many times but unsurprisingly I love most of all the performances by Juliana (my favourite songwriter) and Poliça (my favourite band).

"If I Could" from the upcoming sophomore release, "Whatever, My Love" by The Juliana Hatfield Three. Out February 17th on American Laundromat Records.

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.

"I'm Shy" is a song about being shy.

— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) February 16, 2015

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. 

Joel Gausten

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

Snob's Music

our #PSSF15 line up has been announced! Featuring @citizencope @wfitzsimmons @julianahatfield and @buffalotomband http://t.co/FSRrkjtFIl

— The Music Hall (@MusicHall) February 11, 2015

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.

"Wood" from the upcoming Juliana Hatfield Three sophomore release "Whatever, My Love" available February 17th on American Laundromat Records.

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.