Kirkland Ciccone, from a blog post on 1998's Bed album:

Of course I bought it. I buy anything with her name on it. Then, ignoring college, I sat out in George Square with my CD Walkman, giving dirty looks to any pigeon that might try it with me. And I listened. I listened from start to finish. I listened through a slight rain burst. I listened and loved what I heard. It wasn’t as polished as previous albums, but it was undeniably honest, especially in the case of Sellout, a UK bonus track. Sellout is scabrously honest: “It’s not a sellout if nobody bought it.”

Laura Morgan with a great review of last week's LA show at lyriquediscorde:

I felt both excitement and a sudden sadness when the last song began. That said, sing-screaming along to the line “I’ve got no idols” felt so cathartic. That surge in the crowd hit again, the bouncing and spinning, everyone singing it together, with Juliana. It was powerful, the combining of voices, the variety of people, from different walks and ways, coming together for the music. We may all have no idols per se, except for maybe the music, and for many of us there that night, Juliana’s Three.

Kevin Wilson has an interesting look at instances of Juliana returning to her old songs:

When you’re a fan of an artist for over 20 years, you start to see patterns. And one of Hatfield’s that is quite prominent on this new album is the re-purposing, in one way or another, of songs she previously recorded. Prior to hearing Whatever, My Love, I had already heard 10 of the 12 songs. A good chunk of that has to do with being a fan. A few years back she released a bunch of her demos, on a pay-what-you-want basis, and five of them appeared there. If you’re no more than a casual fan, those songs would seem new. After all, those demo versions were never meant as “official” releases. They can’t really be considered part of the Juliana Hatfield “canon.”

But there are other ways she goes about these re-recordings. Sometimes it’s a straight-up cover of herself. Sometimes it’s a similar song with different lyrics, kind of along the lines of what Guns N’ Roses did with “Don’t Cry” on their two Use Your Illusion albums. Sometimes it’s just tinkering. And other times the changes are fairly radical.

Kevin compares the versions and declares his 'winners'. Worth a look to see if you agree.

a great piece on Become What You Are: http://t.co/vg23YDEwuw ("defying any pop expectations of a winning narrative")

— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) August 21, 2013

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Elizabeth Barker:

There wasn’t much opportunity for daydream or the invention of more extraordinary selves in Become What You Are. Instead Juliana showed you her reality and all the ways it let her down. Some of her angst was existential, like on “For The Birds” (the dead-bird one, the one where she finds a dying bird in the first chorus, and in the second chorus argues that “Humans only wreck the world/They’d kill your whole family for a string of pearls”). A few of the songs were painfully personal: “Addicted” was at least partly about her anorexia (“The skeleton trees remind me of me/They got no leaves/To make the air we breathe”), while “Little Pieces” was a breakup anthem stripped of any cheery delusions of romantic grandeur (“Feels like a heartbreak/But it’s nothing near that great”). And several tracks served as social commentary, taking on everything from rape (“A Dame with a Rod”) to the false promise of rock-star worship (“I Got No Idols”) to the emptiness of the fashion industry (the album-opening “Supermodel,” on which she warns that “Those magazines end up in the trash,” stretching out the lyric’s last syllable for eight weird and gorgeous seconds).

Read the whole article at Popdose.

I used my teenage diaries as an archival source for this essay I wrote on the legacy of @julianahatfield's Hey Babe http://t.co/oLeP8ZBLg3

— Laura Fisher (@termitetree) July 1, 2013

Laura Fisher:

Hey Babe’s landscape of feelings — self-disgust, second-guessing, depression, cautious optimism — have no place in a reception model that hinged strictly on “empowerment.” If Hey Babe’s tone of general malcontent has endeared the album to alienated listeners over the past 21 years, it has also kept the album from wider recognition. This reflects our cultural preference for “vehement passions” over “minor feelings.” As theorist Sianne Ngai notes of the Western literary tradition, “something about the cultural canon itself seems to prefer higher passions and emotions — as if minor or ugly feelings were not only incapable of producing ‘major’ works, but somehow disabled the works they do drive from acquiring canonical distinction.” This explains a lot about Hatfield’s disappearance from the alternative rock narrative.

An outstanding article. Read the whole thing at The New Inquiry.

Andrew Youssef:

I follow Hatfield on Twitter and was intrigued when she announced a Pledge Music campaign for fans to fund her new album of cover songs. One of the limited packages was a fifteen minute phone call with Hatfield for fifty dollars. I immediately got out my Visa card and made the donation as I knew it would sell out. The chance to speak with one of my favorite artists and guitar heroes was a no-brainer.

Ironically, at the time she was supposed to call was the day my chemotherapy ran later than usual. So I have a voice mail on my phone from Hatfield saying she would try back later. When I finally did talk to her, my anxieties melted away as it was effortless talking to her about guitar pedals, working with Josh Freese on her album "Only Everything" and how Nada Surf were criminally underrated.

Read the whole article at OC Weekly.

Andrew links to his photos from last year's Q Division shows in his piece. You can view some of his other work at amateurchemist.com.

Ever fancied strumming a few Juliana tunes but couldn't work them out or be arsed? This last week Rob DiCaterino has posted a series of video guitar lessons on his blog, offering interpretations of Don't Let Me Down, Little Pieces, Close Your Eyes and The Fact Remains.   To conclude his 'Juliana Week' he's also posted some photos and vids of Juliana's shows.