Age agrees with Juliana Hatfield, lending an alluring huskiness to her girlish voice, a weariness to her love songs, and an assurance to her writing. All this is evident on How to Walk Away, a candidly confessional work that perhaps not so coincidentally arrives just before the publication of Hatfield's autobiography, When I Grow Up. How to Walk Away abounds with self-examination but it's not a journey through her back pages -- it's a break-up album. Hatfield doesn't focus on the aftermath of a doomed relationship but rather the process of a messy split, turning in a loose song cycle about love, lust, and loss, filled with false finishes, halted new beginnings, retreads and reversals. Romance and reflection aren't uncommon to Hatfield -- she's never shied away from unrequited crushes or moments of self-doubt -- but here she reveals a resigned caustic wit and sly eye for detail, something that renders the slow dissolving romance on "My Baby..." quite heartbreaking and turns "Just Lust" into a withering dismissal. When Hatfield launched her solo career at the start of the '90s, she couldn't quite deliver such bluntly carnal tunes as her voice quivered with insecurities, which was an appropriate match for the fragility of her jangle pop. Such delicate situations seem in the distant past on How to Walk Away, as there's a tattered edge to her voice and a growing complexity to her craft. She still is foremost a pop songwriter, turning out songs as melodically bracing as "Now I'm Gone," but she balances this jangling pop with slower, folky tunes, occasionally dipping into jazzy after-hours textures, then channeling all her aggression into the nasty, sneering "So Alone," as powerful a rocker as she's ever cut. These shifts in mood are made vivid by a production that has just enough color and detail -- looped rhythms or synthesizers, duets with Richard Butler and Nada Surf's Matthew Caws -- to turn these recordings into full-blooded realizations of Hatfield's heartbreaking, witheringly funny songs, giving How to Walk Away a sense of musical momentum that suits its emotional heft. It's a tight, cohesive record with a subtle but undeniable resonance, a record that Juliana Hatfield always seemed on the verge of delivering and finally has.
While the 1990s have come and gone for most of us, Juliana Hatfield's new album retains that familiar alterna-indie-rock sound. It's the sound that made us care about her in the first place--that and Ms. Hatfield's signature wispy, kittenish voice singing about the lighter side of heartbreak. "The fact remains," Ms. Hatfield sings in the first track of the same name on her recent release, How t...
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It was announced ??How To Walk Away?? Julian Hatfield's new album will be released August 19th via Ye Olde Records, her own label. Details and cover art were also released(below). The album was produced by Andy Chase (of Ivy)at Stratosphere Sound in NYC and features guests Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs) and Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) on vocals, Jody Porter (Fountains Of Wayne) on guitar,Tracy...
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With one of the guys from Ivy producing, a bunch of guest stars including Richard Butler of the Psychedlic Furs, Juliana seems to have worked really hard on this new album. I like the results, so far. Here is another song -- Shining On.
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The Juliana Hatfield Three's Become What You Are was one of those great early '90s albums that just captured those times indie rock was reborn. I've dug a lot of Hatfield's recordings since then and I love this one, off her upcoming album, How To Walk Away. Thanks to Stereogum, where you can download the track right now if you dig it like I do.http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/the-gum-drop-xl-h...
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While the 1990s have come and gone for most of us, Juliana Hatfield's new album retains that familiar alterna-indie-rock sound. It's the sound that made us care about her in the first place--that and Ms. Hatfield's signature wispy, kittenish voice singing about the lighter side of heartbreak. "The fact remains," Ms. Hatfield sings in the first track of the same name on her recent release, How t...
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I love Juliana Hatfield and cannot wait for "How To Walk Away" coming out this Tuesday. "This Lonely love" is on it, and here is the video. Keep making great records and please play bass and sing with the Lemonheads again someday soon! Also, I guess she wrote a memoir that comes out in September. Fuck yeah, count me in!~~
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Julianna Hatfield's new record, 'How To Walk Away' is so, so good. I've been listening to nothing else for the last couple of days. Just wanted pass a tune along from the new album, Nada Surf's Mattew Caws lends his vocal talents to this one as well. Juliana Hatfield - 'Such A Beautiful Girl' MP3 ~~
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The official "This Lonely Love " video found Juliana Hatfield walking around Cambridge with her old-school Discman, an iPod, a boombox, etc. Richard Butler shares vocals on the studio version, but fittingly, Juliana hiked solo in the clip. She performed the track on Leno this past Monday and wore a dress that shows up somewhere in that clip/the How To Walk Away album cover, only this time she d...
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AOL Spinner premiered the video of Juliana Hatfield's "This Lonely Love" yesterday and we couldn't resist posting it too. Hatfield describes the message of the song as, "The song 'This Lonely Love' is about being in love with a song, or with the sound and feeling and spirit in someone's singing voice," she says. "So with the video I wanted to show myself as all alone, with only music as my ~~
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--- - |- MP3: Juliana Hatfield - "Shining On" from How to Walk Away, out now on Ye Olde Records. Nice and pretty, but mellower than some of her best stuff. But hey, we all have to grow up someday. Right? One more:... ~~- Juliana Hatfield
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 The Fact Remains |
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| 2 Shining On |
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| 3 This Lonely Love |
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| 4 My Baby... |
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| 5 Just Lust |
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| 6 Now I'm Gone |
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| 7 Remember November |
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| 8 So Alone |
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| 9 Such a Beautiful Girl |
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| 10 Law of Nature |
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 "How to Walk Away")
