Album Review: Juliana Hatfield – There’s Always Another Girl

By Austin Trunick on August 18th, 2011 in Album Reviews

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Hatfield_Booklet.indd

Our rating:

★★☆☆☆

In her nearly quarter-century in the music business, Juliana Hatfield has experienced the ups and downs of the popular music industry firsthand. Despite the changing times, she has clung firmly to her fundamentals. Her sound is as moored in the 1990s now as it was when she was soundtracking a Wynona Ryder movie or performing with The Lemonheads. Personal fondness for the era will tilt the appeal of her 11th studio album, There’s Always Another Girl, one way or the other. Her candied, subdued singing voice hasn’t aged a bit, and songs such as “Don’t Wanna Dance” and “Sex and Drugs” see Hatfield back in Blake Babies form and feature her underrated guitar work in the form of fuzzed-out solos.

If you can embrace (or at least look past) some antiquated tropes, your next hurdle will be some lyrics that are surprisingly amateurish for such a seasoned veteran. Hatfield is guilty of some painfully literal songwriting, including “Taxicab”, a song about a cab ride, and “Candy Wrappers”, a song mostly about a mess of (you guessed it) candy wrappers left on the floor. The worst is “Batteries”, a song in which she admonishes us on the perils of forgetting to charge our electronics. Nothing says open mic night more than singing lyrics such as “The batteries are dead/Totally, completely dead [...] Completely fucking dead.” It’s bad enough to recall another buried mid-’90s memory: Phoebe Buffay’s agitating coffeehouse performances on Friends.

Still, it’s hard to blame someone for sticking to their guns, and the cult fanbase who helped finance the album’s recording through PledgeMusic.com will no doubt follow her here. You can’t say her heart’s not in the right place, either. Portions of the album’s proceeds will go to support animal shelters in Puerto Rico and New England.

Essential Tracks: “Don’t Wanna Dance”, “Sex and Drugs”, and “Wasting Time”

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  • DM

    This is a pretty amateurish review.

    First of all, anybody who’s listened to Juliana Hatfield in the ’90s knows that her voice has aged a LOT.  She’s a lot less chirpy now, less excitable (arguably less exciting as well), and her timbre is more mature.  Whether that’s a good thing depends on whether you liked the poppy, girlish Hatfield of 18 years ago.  My view would be, her reduced vocal range adds richness, but also makes her less adventurous in her compositions.Hatfield’s guitars aren’t even close to fitting the description “fuzzed out” compared with her guitar sounds on Only Everything or Total System Failure.  ”Sex and Drugs”‘ guitar lines have an odd phrasing, with Hatfield obviously trying to make her guitar sound more like a keyboard, but the tone is quite clean.  Most of her guitar sounds on this record are jangly rather than “fuzzed out”.  She is not making heavy guitar rock as she used to do.Hatfield is not necessarily the most skillful lyricist around, but the reviewer seems unable to go deeper and explain *why* the lyrics are sub-par.  The lines in “Batteries” are, indeed, amateurish, but not so much in its choice of imagery (why shouldn’t a songwriter use a pile of candy wrappers as an image?), but more because Hatfield doesn’t take the imagery to any interesting places.Austin Trunick doesn’t seem to have much experience writing reviews.  If you’re going to write a negative review, as is your perfect right, at least put some insight and detail work into it.

  • knowmystuff

    Somebody Else’s Problem should be on your list of Essential Tracks

  • http://twitter.com/#!/pdxmle mintye

    I can respect what you are saying, I just don’t see it at all though. Hatfield’s voice? Candied? Her voice has never sounded better or more raw. “Batteries” is my absolute favorite, too! 

  • Anonymous

    Never heard about this erotic albums before. I am really curious to get it. But it is uncensored photos.

  • J.christian

    Another anemic, pathetic review with little to no basis for stars given. She is an icon of the era, and if she were new or some Tyler the Creator bullshit this review would sound a whole lot different. What a crock of shit.