I don’t know if you’re following the updates on Juliana Hatfield’s Myspace page, but if you are a fan and you’re not, you’re missing out on a lot of great reading! Hatfield has been blogging regular updates that unmask songs from her catalog in great detail.
Become What You Are is an important album from my formative years as a teen (or perhaps, where it all went wrong? I kid, I kid.) I first became aware of Juliana’s music via her important contributions to some of my favorite Lemonheads songs. Those songs gave birth to curiosity that led to my purchase of Become What You Are before I ever heard a note from the album. “Spin The Bottle” was a pivotal moment of one of my favorite soundtracks of the 90s, Reality Bites.
During that time period, I would see many Juliana shows at Cleveland venues like the Grog Shop (a frequent Hatfield stop,) and one of my favorite Juliana shows was a show at the Agora Ballroom with Jeff Buckley opening. Talk about an amazing double bill!
Hatfield dissects “Fleur De Lys” from the Only Everything disc, and wraps in some discussion of the Become What You Are time period, particularly an evening at home listening to My Bloody Valentine after a day at the studio:
When I was recording my album Become What You Are — my major label debut — in Los Angeles, I used to go home at night after a day of recording to the rented furnished apartment in Burbank that my record company had set me and my band up in and I’d put on MBV’s Loveless album (the one on which “Only Shallow” appears). I’d turn the volume up really loud and lie down on the floor on my back with my head between the two big speakers of the apartment’s stereo and just bliss out.
Loveless calmed me, but also pumped me up, and so was the perfect soundtrack to my life at the time because I was both nervous and excited to be making my first major label album, in the big bad glittering city of lights. I would close my eyes and be sucked into the music so that I felt that I was part of it, or it was part of me — Loveless has a strange entrancing power. It was like meditation. It was like listening to the sounds of angels.
For me, those are some of the best moments of being a music fan – those moments “blissing out” to a favorite album on your stereo, and more often these days, perhaps via your Ipod. You can be having the greatest day, or the worst, and that time alone with THAT certain album, makes everything better. It’s cool to see a respected artist like Juliana revealing her “music fan” side without shame. As I like to say, that’s why we’re supposedly all doing what we do – because we’re music fans!
Check it out, and subscribe for the updates as they are posted.
New album on the way:
Juliana has a new album How To Walk Away, that will be out on August 19th via her own label. Check out streaming samples via her Myspace page.
Stereogum has a nice advance peek at the album with an initial track “So Alone” (download here) that was shared by Hatfield. Hatfield gives the inside scoop on what the track is about, right here.
Stereogum also shared a track this past week that was recorded during the sessions for How To Walk Away called “Back to Freedom.” “Back to Freedom” is featured on the new 2 CD benefit compilation The Green Owl Comp: A Benefit For The Energy Action Coalition.
The compilation features music from Of Montreal, Feist, Muse, Pete Yorn, and many others.
From Stereogum:
100% of the profits made from the album will be given to support the Energy Action Coalition. The money donated from this compilation will support the people on the ground in the EAC while raising environmental awareness in our community.
More info on the compilation can be found hereBonus Download:
The captain’s dead blog has a tasty download of Juliana Hatfield and Evan Dando on World Cafe from 1993. Check it out, and download it.
Juliana Hatfield – It’s A Shame About Ray
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