Hey guys…does anybody else yearn for the carefree, check-shirted, baggy-jeaned days of the mid-’90s? Days where we’d sit on grassy banks next to the river, sharing cheap cider and poppers and chattering incessantly about new albums by the Fannies and Buffalo Tom. Days where we’d proudly purchase a copy of Select magazine just for the double-sided poster of Suede and Smashing Pumpkins. Days where we’d dream about finally smuggling a friend into Reading Festival under a carefully positioned tarp in the boot of a Renault 5.
Well, you’re in luck. Despite the subject matter of ‘Pussycat’ revolving around an attack on events from the 2016 US presidential election and its eventual winner, Donald Trump, Juliana Hatfield has released an album in 2017 that musically has 1993 henna tattooed all over it.
It’s easy to slate artists and bands who haven’t changed their musical style in 30 or so years, but in Hatfield’s case it really is a case of ‘if it ain’t broke...’.
The 13th album (rising to somewhere in the mid-20s if you’re counting side-projects) from the Maine-born indie-rocker is pitched somewhere between a playful and angry response to the election (see Short Fingered Man and Kellyanne for proof) but it still maintains her ability to write a cracking tune despite the frustrations that accompany watching her country slowly crumble.
The opening lyrics to the country-tinged Good Enough for Me are particularly sharp and, with Hatfield’s sarcastic delivery, highlight the beliefs of many Trump supporters in the southern states: “He takes medicine from the ill / and he can’t spell very well / but he knows how to read / and he’s never killed anybody personally.”
Hatfield had previously stated that, following the release of 2015’s ‘Whatever, My Love’ with the newly-reformed Juliana Hatfield Three, she was ready for a break. But in the run up to and fall-out from the election “all of these songs just started pouring out of me. And I felt an urgency to record them, to get them down, and get them out there.” She duly wrote all the songs, played all of the instruments (aside from drums) and produced the whole thing from start to finish in less than a fortnight.
That must have been one hell of an experience and the end product is one of Hatfield’s highlights as a solo artist. Heartless and Touch You Again are as energetic as any of the music produced by Blake Babies well over 25 years ago and there’s a renewed assurance in both her vocal style and delivery throughout. With a snap general election being announced in the UK, it’ll be interesting to see if any British artists follow this example and even more interesting to see if they can pull it off as well as Hatfield has done with ‘Pussycat’.
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