When I first discovered who Juliana Hatfield was, the age of the
\n“grrrl” movement hadn’t come to pass yet. The bluntness – sexual
\nand otherwise – contained in the boundaries of
\nBecome What You Are<\/i> opened a lot of people’s eyes and ears,
\nmine included. I was disappointed with her follow-up album,
\nOnly Everything<\/i>; apparently the record-buying public and her
\nlabel were as well. For a time, it seemed like Hatfield dropped off
\nthe edge of the Earth.<\/p>\n
Now, after recording an album that Atlantic refused to put out
\n(they’re still sitting on the tapes), Hatfield returns with a new
\nlabel (Zoe, a new imprint of the Rounder family), a new album,
\nBed<\/i>, and a new focus of attack musically. Put all of these
\ntogether, and you could easily call this album a comeback. I prefer
\nto call it a “rebirth”.<\/p>\n
The ten songs on
\nBed<\/i> probably won’t surprise any long-time fans of Hatfield,
\nwith the exception that her schol-girl vocals seem to be getting
\nmore refined and smooth. Some of the lyrical bluntness is gone as
\nwell – most of which is the “shock value” quotient. On
\nBed<\/i>, if Hatfield says something that’s a bit brash, she has
\na reason for saying it.<\/p>\n
Lyrically and musically, Hatfield sounds stronger than ever most
\nof the time. Tracks like “I Am A Camera,” “Down On Me” (a title
\nthat has a totally different meaning than you might think) and
\n“Backseat” rival anything that Hatfield has ever done in terms of
\nher greatest material. Likewise, her move to an acoustic guitar on
\n“Running Out” shows off a whole new aspect to her music in terms of
\nsheer power.<\/p>\n
The one drawback to
\nBed<\/i> is that it sometimes seems hard for Hatfield to maintain
\na high level of songwriting quality throughout the whole album.
\n“Sneaking Around” and “Live It Up” just don’t measure up to the
\nrest of the album, and tend to drag things down a bit. (It
\nsometimes seemed hard to stay focused on this album as well; unlike<\/p>\n
Become What You Are<\/i>, this isn’t an album you’ll immediately
\nget sucked into. It takes around two or three listens before you
\nreally get into it.)<\/p>\n
In the end, the time since Hatfield’s brush with the big time
\nseems to have helped her mature both as a songwriter and as a
\nmusician; the overall quality of
\nBed<\/i> is a marked improvement from
\nBecome What You Are<\/i>, if even a tad slower tempo-wise.<\/p>\n
Hatfield might not be running on the major labels now, but in
\nthe end,
\nBed<\/i> seems to be a perfect fit for a smaller label; she has
\nbeen given the chance to create an album on her own terms and with
\nher own unique voice. With one or two small stumbles, the
\nexperiment worked, and
\nBed<\/i> is a very comfortable album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7595],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-39428","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-juliana-hatfield","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39428"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}