{"id":1399,"date":"2010-09-12T14:32:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T21:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2010-09-12T16:04:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T23:04:57","slug":"juliana-hatfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2010\/09\/juliana-hatfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Juliana Hatfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>JULIANA HATFIELD<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Alt-rocker strips down old school\u2014and\u00a0finds peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Juliana Hatfield\u2019s 2008 album How to Walk Away<\/em> was a polished effort, recorded in a New York City studio over a long time with a large cast of musicians. For her latest, Peace and Love,<\/em> she elected to take precisely the opposite tack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis time I wanted to be alone,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted to see what would come out of me with no one else involved.\u201d Writing and recording at home on an analog eight-track recorder, Hatfield came up with a ballad-driven song cycle centered on strummed guitars, delicate vocal harmonies and introspective themes. The lack of production gloss only serves to emphasize her exquisite way with a melody\u2014a gift Hatfield attributes to the impact AM radio had on her when she was growing up. \u201cI fell madly in love with \u201970s pop songs at a time when I was very impressionable,\u201d she says. \u201cI loved Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Seals & Crofts, America\u2014songs that everyone knows. That music really got into my bloodstream and my psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the bulk of Peace and Love<\/em> is spare and acoustic guitar-based, Hatfield does paint outside the lines on occasion. The piano ballad \u201cWhy Can\u2019t We Love Each Other\u201d is the first song she\u2019s ever written on keyboard, while the hot-wired, Neil Young-like electric guitar break in \u201cWhat Is Wrong\u201d provides the disc with its only plugged-in moment. \u201cThere was a period a few years ago when I hunkered down and worked really hard on guitar, learning things like Keith Richards solos in weird tunings,\u201d Hatfield says of her approach to the six-string. \u201cI spent about a year doing that, learning how to do certain scales and so forth. But other than that, I\u2019ve been a slacker\u2014although I care very much about my guitar playing. I think one of the reasons I never studied it very much is that I wanted to keep it pure. I didn\u2019t want to be influenced by other guitarists.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been more than two decades since Hatfield first made her name as part of the cult-beloved trio Blake Babies. She eclipsed that group\u2019s success as leader of the Juliana Hatfield Three with early-1990s modern-rock hits like \u201cMy Sister\u201d and \u201cSpin the Bottle\u201d before going completely solo in 1995. She says she\u2019s only now begun to consider the musical legacy she has built during her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of my old records make me cringe,\u201d she admits, \u201cbut everything about them was very innocent and very pure. My body of work has integrity, in the sense that I never tried to tailor anything to anyone else\u2019s tastes or to the marketplace. I have nothing to be ashamed of, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n

Jan\/Feb 2010 Issue of\u00a0M Music & Musicians<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JULIANA HATFIELD Alt-rocker strips down old school\u2014and\u00a0finds peace Juliana Hatfield\u2019s 2008 album How to Walk Away was a polished effort, recorded in a New York City studio over a long time with a large cast of musicians. For her latest, Peace and Love, she elected to take precisely the opposite tack. \u201cThis time I wanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[32,913,916,914,912,917,10156,915],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}