Album Review - Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield
How to Walk Away
2008 Ye Olde Records
Grade: A-
GPA: 3.6

By: Brent Owen

Juliana Hatfield is one of our most over looked female troubadours. She’s resilient, talented, and mysteriously charismatic. Her eyes stare sultry from behind her trademark red locks, seductively challenging you to come over and fix her.

On How to Walk Away, Juliana writes like a woman who has evolved. And since her career has returned to the indie scene from which she emerged in the late 80’s and early 90’s – this might be the first you’ve heard of her since her one episode story arch on My So Called Life. This doesn’t sound like sinisterly innocent girl that sang “Universal Heart-Beat”, “My Sister”, or “Spin the Bottle”. Her voice sounds hardened, experienced, and more confident – she doesn’t sound like a girl looking for answers, but rather, a woman who has come to terms with answers.

This record does feel like an instruction book where the consistently misunderstood Hatfield imparts value of her experience to anyone who will listen.

As a result of the new found confidence in her vocals, there also seems to be more confidence in her lyric writing as she injects a healthy sense of blunt sexuality into How to Walk Away. While she keeps the songs from getting raunchy or vulgar – but she gets a little bawdy a couple of times. “My Baby…” is a song about a relationship that has been drained of all things affectionate but sustained merely on meaningless sex. The emptiness and boredom with which she sings helps to drive this song’s theme deep into the psyche. And on the song “Just Lust” she writes an ode to the one-night-stand. Her emotional disconnect as the female narrator causes a jarring role reversal that makes the song almost disconcerting. We’re so used to the image of men acting out of lust that it’s almost unsettling to hear a woman singing about acting on the same motivation.

“Such a Beautiful Girl” rings of the beautiful earnestness that a younger Juliana was known for writing. The sparse arrangement, though, doesn’t seem to quite fit with the programmed drum machine that provides the all-to-steady backbeat throughout the song. Although I must say that it’s in this song that I feel Juliana captures her own essence the best when she sings: “She such a beautiful girl and she lives in an ugly world.”

Previous Albums
Sittin’ In a Tree EP (w/Frank Smith)
The White Broken Line: Live Recordings
Made In China
In Exile Deo
Gold Stars
Juliana’s Pony: Total System Failure
Beautiful Creature
Bed
Please Do Not Disturb EP
Only Everything
Become What Your Are
I See You EP
Hey Babe