American Laundromat Records are offering a new t-shirt based on the Blood album cover.
Orders are being taken now for shipping at the end of the month.
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.
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.
Zoe Camp, writing for a Bandcamp feature describing Juliana's transition from an 8-track machine to a new recording process for Blood:
Unfortunately for Hatfield, the apparatus, a since-discontinued model, broke several years prior to the pandemic and she wasn’t able to find a replacement by the time the shut-downs began: “I was like, ‘Shit, I either go on eBay and try to find the same machine, or I just bite the bullet and learn the stupid GarageBand so I can at least have that ability.’” Hatfield decided to “bite the bullet,” and with Davis’ help, she began to master the machine. ”It was like pulling teeth,” she says. “There were those moments where the system of GarageBand was assuming I understood certain things, and I didn’t, so I’d write to Jed like, ‘WHAT DO I DO?! WHY IS IT DOING THIS?!,’ and he would calmly explain things to me—he’s a great teacher—and he’d send screenshots and places to find help. So I basically figured out what to do with GarageBand, kicking and screaming every step of the way.”
Juliana, speaking to Duncan Seaman for The Yorkshire Post:
People think that being a citizen is being a consumer. There’s too much money involved in everything... Even before the past few years I’ve always had a part of me fantasising about disappearing, and some day I probably will, not into the woods but into the shore somewhere, maybe on a houseboat. Just take off and be off the grid, surviving quietly. It seems a really nice freedom. Quiet would be nice and not always having to think about commerce and exchanging money for things, or goods for money.
Charley Ruddell, writing for The ARTery at wbur.org:
For someone who has lived in Cambridge for the better part of 15 years, Juliana Hatfield feels remarkably far away. “It’s hard to resist the pull of modernity, although I keep trying,” she tells me from her home in Central Square after redialing me from her crackling landline. One day, she says, she’ll be totally off the grid; for now, though, leading up to the release of her 19th solo album “Blood” (out May 14), she maintains her social media out of necessity, and still rocks a Nokia flip phone she purchased in 2004. She fantasizes about living in a small stone home by a clean water source in a foreign country. “You have to have dreams to sustain you sometimes,” she says hazily.
Erin Osmon, interviewing Juliana for The Guardian:
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.
Juliana’s response to this section of the article:
Other posts you may have missed in recent days:
Jed Gottlieb's interview with Juliana at Boston Herald.
Kevin Wilson's review of the Blood themed livestream at My Shuffled Life.
Jeff Gemmill's initial thoughts on the new album at The Old Grey Cat.
Vincent Scarpa, interviewing Juliana for Performer Mag:
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.