From Juliana’s post on Twitter, August 6, 2021:
Hello, friends. I am very very sorry to have to say this but due to unforeseen circumstances I am no longer going to be able to take part in the upcoming tour that I'd planned on doing with Soul Asylum and Local H. I was really looking forward to it, and to all the music, and to seeing everyone out there, and I hope to be able to hit the road again before too long. xoxo, Juliana
American Laundromat Records, on an unseasonal new pressing of Juliana's vinyl single, previously available during last winter's US Record Store Day event:
Juliana's "Christmas Cactus" gets a brand new pressing on beautiful Coke Bottle Clear vinyl. This fantastic 7" is a label exclusive limited to 500 copies. Spins at 45 RPM
Pre-orders (for end of July shipping) including signed copies and test pressings options are being taken now at American Laundromat Records' store.
Juliana will continue her full album livestreams from Q Division Studios with a solo performance of 2000’s Beautiful Creature on Saturday June 19, 2021 at 4pm EDT.
The pay what you want deal remains and donations can be made at Juliana’s official site: julianahatfield.com
Laura Kidd interviews Juliana in the latest episode of her Attention Engineer podcast.
As many of you’ll know, Laura has recenlty released an excellent album titled Exotic Monsters under her new artist name Penfriend. She previously performed as She Makes War and supported the JH3 in London and Bristol on the 2019 UK tour.
Attention Engineer:
In this conversation, we discuss:
• writing about the truth, rejecting society’s expectations and demonstrating alternative ways of living
• finding creative freedom in limitations • sensitivity as a superpower
• home recording – Juliana’s tough transition from analogue to digital recording, and how her new album “Blood” is her most misanthropic yet
Now nearly three decades into her career, Juliana Hatfield is back with her excellent 19th solo album, Blood, and joins us this week as our SHERO in the Spotlight.
Another in depth feature with a guitar site, this time with Paul Robson for Guitar.com:
Hatfield has gone through quite a few guitars in the years since that Challenger, but very few of them remain in her custody now. “I have the new Yamaha Revstar 502 I’ve been playing on the most recent livestreams,” she tells us. “I like the simplicity of it and I like the P-90 pickups. I had never played a Yamaha electric before, so it was kind of an experiment for me, and it’s brand new but, so far, I like it.
“I only have two other electric guitars right now, and they’re both really different, but they’re great. I only used one electric guitar on the new album and that was my First Act Delia LS, which was made for me about 10 years ago, and my other guitar is a 1968 or ’69 Gibson Custom SG.”
Gregory Adams, interviewing Juliana for Guitar World:
In terms of the tangibles, then, and working outside of the box, what were you using in terms of guitars and amps?
(JH) Like I said, some of it started with me sending these crappy recordings to Jed. Some of that was on acoustic guitar, just playing into the built-in mic – I think on the song Torture I probably set up a mic to get a decent acoustic guitar sound.
Some of it me was videos of me playing an electric guitar. I was mostly using my first First Act electric, a Delia LS.
[For tone] I really pared it down, mostly using one sound from GarageBand, because I didn’t really like the others. I’m not comfortable making noise in my apartment, because of my neighbors, so I started off using this GarageBand sound, but later on I went into the studio and started using amplifiers.
There’s this one sound, it’s called ‘World’s Smallest Amp’ on my version of GarageBand. It’s kind of a cruddy sound, which I like. Not too clean, and not distorted in an icy way.
There’s a lot of that on the album, but there’s some choice, biting stuff on there, and for that I was using a tiny Fender Mini Twin. Smaller than a bread box, just a few inches across. It’s cute, but it makes really great fuzz sounds. I think I plugged that into my [ZZ.Fex] Fuzz Factory for a couple things, too. You can hear it in certain spots, like the bridge of Shame of Love.
Speaking of SPIN, they have just published a newly formatted online version of their Juliana cover feature from March 1994.
Writer Rob Sheffield:
Hatfield calls me a couple days later from Idaho, where she’s been skiing. She sounds much mellower, out in the open air and on the slopes, calling from a room of her own. She tells me about a particularly cool ski trip she once took with Dando and J Mascis. “We’re pretty equally matched—we all have the same ability, but different styles. J skis like he plays guitar, it’s really cool. Really reckless, but also really graceful.”
Juliana, on Pretenders' self-titled debut album:
It is immaculate and untouchable! It has tons of attitude but also subtlety. Chrissie Hynde’s voice is sublime, timeless, and unique, really one of the best voices ever in rock, or in women in rock specifically, if you want to be categorizing like that. She’s a model for how to be cool and a boss and good at what you do. I am always hoping to someday get to the place where I am as on top of my game as the Pretenders were at that moment in time.
Read Juliana's thoughts on 4 other albums "she can't live without" in the article at SPIN.
I think Blood has to be one of Juliana’s most widely praised records of her career. A selection of the reviews:
Will Pinfold, Spectrum Culture (85%):
Juliana Hatfield’s 19th solo album is one of her finest: an ideal marriage of catchy melody, musical experimentation and troubled lyricism.
Bill Pears, Brooklyn Vegan:
The indie rock great delivers equal parts pop hooks and anger/frustration on one of her best records
Frank Valish, Under The Radar (7/10):
It’s exciting to see an artist who, despite an estimable catalog, is continuing to make the best music of her career, year after year.
LamontPaul, Outsideleft:
Ten summer-friendly, hummable, toe-tappers with soft bursts of Mellotrons and Hammond organs -- it’s a Best of 2021 contender, for sure.
Carli Scolforo, Paste:
Blood is bubbly and sweet while still being rough around the edges, with plenty of head-turning lines to boot.
Domenic Strazzabosco, Riff Magazine (7/10):
There’s a string of particularly gruesome names during the second portion of the work. However, during these, it becomes more obvious that, though the songs are shrouded in the carnage, they are really about trying to be a nice and caring person in an increasingly tense and violent world.
John Moore, New Noise (4/5):
Much like’s 2017’s Pussycat, politics is all over Blood making for some of Hatfield’s strongest songwriting in decades.
Carlo Thomas, Beats Per Minute (74%):
Blood is an undeniably fun album brimming with indie-pop sensibilities and anthemic energy that makes listeners want to sing along. But what lines they’d sing!
Raeann Quick, mxdwn:
..an important addition to Hatfield’s large body of work
Russ Holsten, Slug Mag:
The album pulses with beeps, fuzz, distortion and random video game sounds. A song can sound melodic one minute and sound like crushed cans the next. It all works with the tone of the record.
with thanks to Carlos Lopez for sourcing many of these links
Juliana, talking about the track Suck It Up to Morgan Enos for a Grammys article:
"Suck it Up" is more specific to the idea of a creative person—an artist—going to a bank and trying to get a mortgage. This whole society is based on certain things: marriage, cohabitation, capitalism, consumerism, and also including homeownership. People are bred to believe that owning a home is something everyone should aspire to.
But it's not for everyone; that's one thing. If you're the type of person who doesn't have a weekly paycheck, no matter how much money you have, it's going to be difficult for the system to approve you for a big loan like that, because you don't have a steady weekly paycheck. That's exactly what the song is about.
It's kind of like "Mouthful of Blood" in the way that the system doesn't allow for nuance in speech or thought. Also, the financial system doesn't allow for nuance in ways of living. You can't just call and have a conversation. They punch your data into the computer, the algorithm feeds it back in numbers and you either cut the mustard or you don't.
The interview includes Juliana's thoughts on all 10 songs from Blood, and therefore well worth a read.
The Record Store Day Podcast with Paul Myers:
On Episode #42, Boston music icon Juliana Hatfield talks about her brand new album Blood (American Laundromat), while comedy producer Dan Pasternack talks about Jonathan Winters: Unearthed (Comedy Dynamics) the three-disc, vinyl-only compilation that he produced and curated for RSD Drops #1 June 12. And RSD's Carrie Colliton talks about the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, and the Almost Famous "Stillwater Demos" EP also dropping on RSD Drops #1.
From Warren Kurtz's interview with Juliana for Goldmine:
JH: I drew this female in a bikini with a black pen and Jed Davis colored it, including the blood bubbles coming off the hands in the background. I drew it from a photograph where the woman was actually in the sky with buildings in the background, so I don’t know if it was a circus or what the event was. She looks like a warrior, going through harsh times, but emerging victoriously, flying, and who needed those hands anyway?
GM: It is an interesting contrast, just like your music.
JH: Also, the pose she is in seems really joyful and playful as she soars.
Hatfield is one of the sharpest writers around—she’s funny, smart, caustic, observant and deeply, deeply wise. In this conversation Juliana talks to Alex about being in a post-love state of mind, if she gets recognized at the gym and the reverse of seasonal affective disorder. They also talk about cupcakes and muffins….
Juliana, talking about the track Chunks, from an excellent interview by Grant Walters for Albumism:
It’s got a couple of different inspirations, but I guess the most obvious one is just the feeling of wanting to punish the bad guys—and just taking it to a cartoonish extreme. I mean, I hope people can see the humor in it and understand that I don’t actually want to do these things to people. It’s just a feeling I know a lot of people are having, you know, this feeling of rage and a burning desire to punish the bad guys because we’ve seen so much exposure of rottenness in the past four years. Just so much hatred, and corruption, and greed, and nastiness.
People feel unable to do anything about it and this feeling of futility, so I just put them into a song. But then, also, there’s a feminist reading, and sometimes I look at it as a song about how women are expected to behave in this society and meant to be friendly, polite, accommodating, quiet, pleasant. And, you know, if you raise your voice or if you take offense to something, someone will say to you, ‘why can’t you be nice? Why are you so rude?’ So, it could be seen as a feminist reaction to society’s expectations of womanhood. That’s another kind of reading on female anger and how people are dealing with women’s anger.
Juliana is the musical guest at the end of episode 461 of Portland's Live Wire with Luke Burbank show.
The segment starts at 46:03 with a brief interview before Juliana performs Mouthful Of Blood.
Continuing this little burst of interviews to promote Blood, Juliana has spoken to Blake Maddux for The Arts Fuse:
AF: Rather than recording an album’s worth of covers by a single artist, as you have with Olivia Newton-John and The Police in recent years, which album by any artist of your choice might you like to cover in its entirety?
JH: Oh shoot, I just had an idea the other day about that. I thought of an album that I would record. Now I can’t remember it. Damn. I don’t know … Nothing is coming to my head. I like the idea of doing that though. Maybe the first Weezer album. The Blue Album.
Juliana, speaking about her livestreams with Scott Lapatine for Stereogum as part of a career spanning Q&A:
I always feel like I didn’t do a good enough job. I have the same old self-criticism that I have of all my performances, so that’s the only problem I have. I feel like I haven’t really completely nailed a show yet, a livestream show, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the format.
It’s kind of nice to be able to just get up and drive a couple miles to the studio, and then play an album, and have people all over the world be able to check it out for free, and it seems to make certain people happy, which is good.
I’m not using any third party or middleman. I’m just doing it. There’s no ticketing system. It’s just directly to the people, so that makes it easier for me. I initially was checking out a couple companies that did the ticketing and the broadcasting of it, but I just couldn’t deal with… I didn’t have enough autonomy within their systems, and I just wanted the freedom to have it just be my own thing, so fortunately Q Division [Studios] was able to do it with me, and they’re my friends, so it’s good.
