Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police - Review Round-up
Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police is released today. Marvellous.
A selection of the reviews:
Chris Ingalls, PopMatters (8/10):
As Juliana Hatfield has demonstrated, the Police songbook is wide and varied enough to be open to endless interpretation. As she has demonstrated with this album as well as the Olivia Newton-John project, she's a musician who is dedicated to paying tribute to the music of her youth and finding new and interesting ways to present it.
Andy Crump, Paste (7.6/10):
You will not at any point feel like you’re hearing The Police for the first time while Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police streams on your laptop, but you will feel like you’re hearing them from a new angle.
Pablo Gorindi, Associated Press:
Among the best versions is “Murder By Numbers,” originally a jazzy tune also covered that way by Frank Zappa, which sounds here like it’s been adapted for a remake of “A Clockwork Orange” as Hatfield emphasizes the song’s violence and dread over its morbid humor. “Hungry for You (J’aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)” turns into a high speed J.J. Cale track with some very Cars-like keyboards near the end, while “Next to You” seems to have arrived straight from the early 1990s indie craze.
Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter (3/5):
Hatfield’s choices are an intriguing mix of hits like “Roxanne” and “Every Breath You Take” with less iconic tracks such as “Landlord” (an obscure B-side) and “Rehumanize Yourself,” a deeper cut from Ghost in the Machine, the latter two played close to the original versions. The project is more intriguing the further Hatfield strays from how the Police recorded these songs, such as when she removes reggae touches from “Hole in My Life,” infusing it with a far darker tone.
Adrian P, pennyblackmusic.co.uk:
Exploring the less familiar material brings up a greater consistency in terms of invention and hooks. Hence, lots of imagination and charm comes packed into effervescently bouncy skanks through ‘Canary in a Coalmine’, ‘Hungry For You’ and ‘(J'Aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)’; a swirling spin through ‘Hole in My Life’; an effects-heavy warping of ‘Rehumanize Yourself’; and terrific punk-meets-college-rock stomps through ‘Murder By Numbers’, ‘Landlord’, ‘Next To You’ and ‘It’s Alright For You’.