The second date of the Juliana Hatfield Three US tour was a hometown show for Juliana last night at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA.
Another great set of photos here by David Young.
A little look at the merch in this tweet from Eric Liwanag:
Further to the previously posted photos and set list here's another set from Thursday's opening night at the Port City Music Hall in Portland, Maine.
Thanks to David Young for these excellent pictures that capture the performance so well.
The Juliana Hatfield Three commenced their US tour last night at the Port City Music Hall in Portland, ME. Kind of a big deal.
No messing about on the set list - it was straight into the entirety of Become What You Are and a bunch of great choices to end.
Photos and set list (from memory) courtesy of Lieve.
- Supermodel
- My Sister
- This Is The Sound
- For The Birds
- Mabel
- A Dame With A Rod
- Addicted
- Feelin' Massachusetts
- Spin The Bottle
- President Garfield
- Little Pieces
- I Got No Idols
- What A Life
- Fleur de Lys
- Everybody Loves Me But You
- I'm Shy
- Ordinary Guy
- Push Pin
- Wood
- Dumb Fun
- Nirvana (Solo Encore)
Tap / Click to enlarge these pics:
update - see also David's excellent photos from this show
A feature for The Boston Globe ahead of the Sinclair show, including quotes from Dean and the other two of The Three:
“There’s no more three months in LA for us,” says Fisher, comparing these sessions with the ones for “Become What You Are,” which was produced by Scott Litt shortly after he’d helmed R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People.”
“I think it’s good because all of our contemporaries are just finding ways of doing this,” Fisher adds, “being your own small business and making it work. You have to do more jobs, wear more hats to do it, and I think Juliana’s great at doing that.”
Juliana, talking to The Examiner
It was important to me that we didn’t just go on the road as a nostalgia act, and that’s why I wanted to have a new album. Yes, there are people who love that album from 1993. But maybe they’ll like the new album. I’m not gonna force it on them, but I think they might like it. It’s important to me to keep producing new material and I do put out records on my label, just very quietly. I try to put out something every year, and most of them I don’t promote, but I put them out there. I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing the tour of Become What You Are. I needed to have something new just to prove that I can still write songs and I have more to show than just that one album. I’ve been doing this since then, and I still have good stuff. I cannot be summed up by that one album.
The new Juliana Hatfield Three album is now available to stream for Spotify users.
As previously announced it is available on CD from American Laundromat Records and on download from iTunes.
There may be other formats to come:
Another selection of recent reviews for Whatever, My Love:
Whatever, My Love, despite its plainspoken lyrics and shrugging title, doesn’t ignore the complicated in favor of these simple pleasures. In fact, in acknowledging the darkness on “Push Pin” or “If I Could” or “Wood”, the Juliana Hatfield Three argues that simple pleasures might be the hardest to come by and the hardest one. That is the central tension of the record, and one that keeps things taut even when “Invisible” runs through the chorus a few too many times or when songs like “Now That I Have Found You” bury the best elements—the jagged guitar phrasings—under other, sleeker production.
6/10
Matthew Fiander, PopMatters
By marrying her wry, world-weary songs to the brighter, optimistic punch of the JHT, Hatfield winds up with a record that delivers a hard, immediate hit -- particularly on the cynical pop "Ordinary Guy" and grind of "If Only We Were Dogs" -- but leaves a lasting scar that's soothed by the melodies and that ringing, hooky pop that is often labeled as collegiate but now feels deeper and richer in the hands of rockers who never deny their impending middle age. In other words, it's the best kind of reunion because it's not only lacking in nostalgia, it shows that some things can be better the second time around.
4.5/5
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic
Throughout her career, Hatfield's strongest work's emerged when she's clicked with her collaborators. She made magic with the Blake Babies. And she made magic with Fisher and Philips. So, for longtime fans, Whatever, My Love gives reason for optimism. And, of the album, Hatfield's said: "We haven’t totally reinvented the wheel or anything." Which is what you want to hear. She goes back to her earlier timeless sound, one that emerged from punk, and skips the saccharine singer-songwriter stuff.
6.1/10
Brandon Stosuy, Pitchfork
It more than stands on its own as a wry, uncompromising, unapologetically jangly take on living with the general discomfort that comes along with being a modern human. And it’s reassuring to hear that, 20 years on, Juliana Hatfield still has just as much bite as the dogs she’s been singing about.
Pete Chianca, Wicked Local
The jangle-rock numbers like “I’m Shy”, “Push Pin”, and put-a-smile-on-your-face “If Only We Were Dogs” particularly have catch, but there’s also some sweet sadness in songs such as “Invisible”, “If I Could”, and “I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands”. There are some relatively not as good tracks – “Now That I Have Found You” is too simply cheery, while the processional rhythm behind “Woods” doesn’t work that well (and the guy described in “Ordinary Guy” seems pretty rare & hard to match…) – but it’s what you wanted from a revived Juliana Hatfield Three.
Ted Chase, QRO
There are one or two missteps, the stuttering tempo of Wood doesn’t really work and the lyrics for Ordinary Guy, I’m Shy and the busy Push Pin are a little hard to listen to coming from a woman in her forties (“oh I want an ordinary guy”, “if only we were dogs it would so easy to be happy”). Much better are the more relaxed, sparser tracks. I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands has the light charm of late period Lemonheads, and moody closer Parking Lots succeeds by virtue of being a departure from the rest of the album, giving the keyboards prominence with a rather muted vocal from Hatfield.
Whatever, My Love has reminded me how much I enjoy Juliana Hatfield’s music. While her solo material and endeavors with other artists hold their own merit, there is something to be said about the chemistry between Hatfield, Phillips and Fisher. They have been able to step right back into the Juliana Hatfield Three as if they were never apart.
Chris Martin, Examiner
What could have been a tired rehash of past glories is actually quite the opposite. There are memorable moments and songs that last beyond their final note in your memory. When record this loops round on repeat, you are glad that it’s back again.
D R Pautsch, Soundblab
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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.”