Blood (2021)
Juliana Hatfield
- The Shame Of Love
- Gorgon
- Nightmary
- Had A Dream
- Splinter
- Suck It Up
- Chunks
- Mouthful Of Blood
- Dead Weight
- Torture
Blood is Juliana's 19th studio album, released on May 14, 2021.
The first single Mouthful of Blood debuted on January 28, 2021.
Juliana performed the song on the Full Frontal with Samantha Bee show on April 28, 2021:
The second single, Gorgon, was released on April 22, 2021. Quoted at Stereogum, Juliana said:
“It was fun building it up from scratch and then letting it all hang loose in the long free-pop/jazz outro. Recording at home, there’s no one stopping me from indulging in every wacky musical whim that pops into my head.”
Release Party Livestream
On Saturday May 8, 2021 (the weekend prior to the release) Juliana performed a selection of songs from Blood from Q Division Studios in a YouTube livestream.
The entire set was themed around blood including songs such as Anemia, Evan, Cesspool and “the bloodiest song of them all… this is about genetic blood” as she introduced My Sister.
Kevin Wilson reviewed the show at My Shuffled Life.
Launch Publicity
American Laundromat Records information on the launch of pre-orders on January 28, 2021:
“Blood” is Juliana’s 19th solo studio album of originals, and a deep dive into the dark side. The album is a brutal and critical look at modern human psychology and behavior; at personal and societal sickness. “I think these songs are a reaction to how seriously and negatively a lot of people have been affected by the past four years,” says Juliana. “But it’s fun, musically. There’s a lot of playing around. I didn’t really have a plan when I started this project.”
“Chunks” and “Had A Dream” are gritty and abrasive while “Mouthful of Blood” and “Gorgon” are groovy and ultra-melodic. All of it is eminently hummable and thought-provoking. Sophisticated but catchy. Challenging but danceable.
“I always love coming up with melodies and then trying to fit words into them—it’s like doing a puzzle,” says Juliana. “And I always find places to use the Mellotron flutes and strings, on every album, because those sounds are so beautiful to me. They are a nice counterpoint to the damaged lyrical content.”
The album was recorded largely at home—Juliana’s home in Massachusetts and recent collaborator Jed Davis’ home in Connecticut. “During self-isolation I took the opportunity to finally learn how to record into my laptop,” says Juliana, “and that’s how this album came to be. (Usually I work in a studio.) I did more than half the work in my room—with Jed helping me to troubleshoot the technology, and helping with building and arranging some of the songs--and then I finished up with additional overdubs and mixing with engineer James Bridges at Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA.”
Availability
Release date: May 14, 2021
Vinyl, CD, and Cassette options were available at https://www.alr-music.com/products/juliana-hatfield-blood-pre-order
Personnel
Juliana Hatfield - Vocals, Guitar, Drum Set, Keyboards, Bass Guitar + Production + Illustrations, Photography
Jed Davis - Drum Programming, Keyboards, Synth Bass + Production + Design, Layout
James Bridges - Mixing at Q Division Studios
All songs written by Juliana Hatfield except ‘The Shame of Love’ and ‘Suck It Up’ written by Juliana Hatfield and Jed Davis.
Mastered by Sean Glonek at SRG Studios
INTERVIEWS
In an interview with Boston Herald on January 23, 2021, Juliana said, ahead of the release:
“It might be shockingly dark to some people. It’s inspired by the past four years, the past year in particular. The lyrical content is not very hopeful, there’s some pretty harsh and violent imagery. But the music is cool, kind of groovy and prog. I enjoy exploring the dark side in my music, that keeps me healthy. And I’m very anti-violence in real life, it just feels good to dive into the shadows and swim around a little bit. And people who know my sense of humor will understand that there’s humor in these songs too.”
Allston Pudding, April 2021:
AP: A lot of our readers are musicians that are trying to figure out how to record albums during a pandemic. I heard a lot of Blood was recorded at home. What instruments were recorded at home?
JH: I usually start off with a drum machine beat, just one beat that repeats over and over. Because I don’t know how to program a whole complicated drum beat. I have an old drum machine that I use. I might find a beat on that and record a few minutes of it. Or I find a beat on GarageBand and then lay down 4 minutes of a drum beat. And then start adding maybe acoustic or electric guitar, and then I just add onto that as I see fit. A little keyboard, bass, vocals.
After I had done a lot of it at home I took the stuff to Q Division Studios and added real drums to the fake drums and I added some more guitars that I wanted to do in the studio because I can’t really play guitars through loud amps in my apartment.
There are a few songs that I collaborated on with Jed Davis [Sevendys, Collider]. You can tell the songs he worked on because he programmed more elaborate drums like on “Shame of Love” and “Had A Dream.” The real simple drums are me, like on “Nightmary” and “Gorgon.” I have more of a simple groove, like on Nightmary there’s one cymbal crash at the end and that was me. That’s my style. I’m not a flashy drummer.
Vincent Scarpa for Performer Mag, May 2021:
VS: It’s interesting to see this record and Pussycat as bookends of the Trump era, though of course they’re so much more than that, and about more than that. (I’ve long argued for the political nature of all your music, whether it be front and center or a more covert kind of personal politics.) Were you still feeling some of the rage we talked about when we spoke together in promoting Pussycat? How had your outlook changed, if at all, as we approached the end of the Trump presidency and entered the present one, into which this album is being released? A song like “Nightmary,” in which you describe “hour after hour bombarded by lies / it’s a desecration of your mind,” seems to testify to some lingering — and certainly justified — rage.
JH: The album is definitely inspired by the last four years and all of the ugliness and all of the dirt that floated to the surface. Now it’s all out there, floating around. All the rocks that have been overturned, all the scum that floated to the top. And now we’re living with it, and we have to deal with it — or not. I’m really glad that there’s new leadership, but I don’t feel like that solves anything, really. Well, it solves one big problem, right? But most of the bad guys still need to be punished. And the songs “Chunks” and “Had a Dream” are about that; about wanting those guys to be punished. And that still has to happen. There’s a lot of unfinished business, and ongoing corruption and lies and murder and greed. It’s not ending because we have a new president.
I think this album is my most misanthropic album of all of them. I’m not kind to my own self on this record. I think I came out of the past four years with this feeling that it’s more clear to me than ever that people are not going to leave this world a better place. People can’t be trusted to do the right thing. People are selfish. Humanity, as a whole, is going to ruin this world. It’s happening. And we can try to do the right things, we can try to change, but ultimately you have to contend with the fact that people are selfish and we’re on kind of a downward spiral. We can make little fixes, elect different presidents, but it’s a Band-Aid on a deep wound.
Jed Gottlieb for Boston Herald, May 2021:
Frustrations came up constantly, but the two of them made tech an integral part of “Blood.” The song “The Shape of Love,” with its buzzing guitar and chopped-up-and-pasted-back-together arrangement, feels like it owes laptop production a debt of gratitude. The fits-and-starts and synth pulses of “Gorgon” echoes the cool vibes of “The Shape of Love.”
“Jed really added some stuff, programming drums and adding synth bass, and it was the kind of stuff that I wouldn’t choose to do on my own or even know how to do on my own,” Hatfield said. “He added a really different flavor to a lot of songs.”
Erin Osmon for The Guardian, May 2021:
On Blood, she channels these complex emotions into tuneful, three-minute vignettes whose lyrics often teem with anxiety, horror and existential dread. “A lot of bad stuff has been happening over the last four years, and the last year in particular, and writing was a way for me to deal,” Hatfield says. “Writing these songs didn’t cure me of all the anger but it definitely helped.” Throughout the album, she dreams about stabbing the former president, describes life in a world controlled by fascists, bites her tongue until it bleeds and is paralysed by love. Hard truths are conveyed through fantasy and imagined brutality, like a cleverer Game of Thrones. “In my real life I’m obviously not a violent person, and writing these songs doesn’t mean I want to go out and stab someone,” she says. “It’s a metaphorical stabbing.” Hatfield is doing what she’s always done: relaying dark, vulnerable and embarrassing feelings with remarkable insight.
Charley Ruddell for wbur, May 2021:
“Blood” exists at the unique intersection of infectiously melodic pop rock and a deeply cynical perspective of humanity. The album, like much music being released now, was recorded largely in the 2020 quarantines, and places a large emphasis on “how seriously and negatively a lot of people have been affected by the last four years.” She offers a tinge of clarity for that subtext: “I’ve always had this misanthropic streak running through my music since the beginning, in the sense of wanting the bad guys brought to justice. That’s been a thread running through my music since the very beginning.”
Juliana, speaking to Grant Walters for Albumism, May 2021, on the subject matter of the track Chunks:
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, from an interview with Morgan Enos for Grammy.com, which includes her thoughts on all 10 songs, May 2021:
"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.
Other interviews:
Juliana Hatfield: “There’s some biting stuff on this album – the Fender Mini Twin is cute, but it makes really great fuzz sounds” - Guitar World, May 2021
Juliana Hatfield: “The most joyful part of life is melodies and harmonies - singing them, playing them, listening to them” - Guitar.com, May 2021
Yorkshire Post, May 2021
Juliana Hatfield Explores American Violence On “Blood” - Bandcamp, May 2021
Interview: Juliana Hatfield Looks back On Blake Babies, ‘God’s Foot’, & More - Stereogum, May 2021
Juliana Hatfield Talks About “Blood” - The Arts Fuse, May 2021
Reviews
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
Jeff Gemmill also wrote his initial thoughts at The Old Grey Cat.
T-shirts
American Laundromat Records also released a black movie style t-shirt at the time of pre-order, and a version of the album cover design followed in August 2021.
Artwork
Juliana’s original drawing (via Twitter, May 14, 2021)
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.
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