When I first discovered who Juliana Hatfield was, the age of the
“grrrl” movement hadn’t come to pass yet. The bluntness – sexual
and otherwise – contained in the boundaries of
Become What You Are opened a lot of people’s eyes and ears,
mine included. I was disappointed with her follow-up album,
Only Everything; apparently the record-buying public and her
label were as well. For a time, it seemed like Hatfield dropped off
the edge of the Earth.
Now, after recording an album that Atlantic refused to put out
(they’re still sitting on the tapes), Hatfield returns with a new
label (Zoe, a new imprint of the Rounder family), a new album,
Bed, and a new focus of attack musically. Put all of these
together, and you could easily call this album a comeback. I prefer
to call it a “rebirth”.
The ten songs on
Bed probably won’t surprise any long-time fans of Hatfield,
with the exception that her schol-girl vocals seem to be getting
more refined and smooth. Some of the lyrical bluntness is gone as
well – most of which is the “shock value” quotient. On
Bed, if Hatfield says something that’s a bit brash, she has
a reason for saying it.
Lyrically and musically, Hatfield sounds stronger than ever most
of the time. Tracks like “I Am A Camera,” “Down On Me” (a title
that has a totally different meaning than you might think) and
“Backseat” rival anything that Hatfield has ever done in terms of
her greatest material. Likewise, her move to an acoustic guitar on
“Running Out” shows off a whole new aspect to her music in terms of
sheer power.
The one drawback to
Bed is that it sometimes seems hard for Hatfield to maintain
a high level of songwriting quality throughout the whole album.
“Sneaking Around” and “Live It Up” just don’t measure up to the
rest of the album, and tend to drag things down a bit. (It
sometimes seemed hard to stay focused on this album as well; unlike
Become What You Are, this isn’t an album you’ll immediately
get sucked into. It takes around two or three listens before you
really get into it.)
In the end, the time since Hatfield’s brush with the big time
seems to have helped her mature both as a songwriter and as a
musician; the overall quality of
Bed is a marked improvement from
Become What You Are, if even a tad slower tempo-wise.
Hatfield might not be running on the major labels now, but in
the end,
Bed seems to be a perfect fit for a smaller label; she has
been given the chance to create an album on her own terms and with
her own unique voice. With one or two small stumbles, the
experiment worked, and
Bed is a very comfortable album.
