[ATTENDED: December 14, 2022] Juliana Hatfield
I was a big fan of Juliana Hatfield back in the 90s. I thought she was the bomb. And I was really excited to see her play live when she opened for the B-52s at Boston College back in 1993. I actually hated the B-52s (they were so overplayed at my college in 1991 that I never wanted to hear “Love Shack” again in my life) so I left before they came on.
And then, some time around 2000 I lost track of her. I was always happy to hear she was putting out new music, but I didn’t give it much of a listen. However, her 2018 album that is all covers of Olivia Newton John songs is pretty sweet.
She had toured Philly back in 2015 and I considered going because it was the Juliana Hatfield Three playing again (I should have gone!). She also played in 2019, but I wasn’t quite as sure about that one for some reason. But here she was opening for The Lemonheads!
A few minutes after On Being an Angel cleared their stuff, Juliana came out. It was just her and her guitar plugged into a tiny amp. The volume was perfect She sounded great as she started singing a song I knew immediately..
She opened with “Everybody Loves Me But You” from her first record–the one where I fell in love with her sound. It was weird to hear it without the bass (she writes great basslines), but it was great to hear this song live again almost thirty years later.
Juliana has put out a ton of records since then and she played songs from a lot of them. “Candy Wrappers” from 2011. She played three songs from 2000’s Beautiful Creature. She tried valiantly to hit some high notes. She can certainly still hit the high notes, but it’s possible that her singing style doesn’t quite lend itself to solo guitar play. This was particularly notable on “Somebody is Waiting for Me.”
In fact, it almost seemed like she was a little nervous. No not nervous, because she commanded the room pretty well, but perhaps rusty. I haven’t seen her play and haven’t seen any video of her playing recently, so I don’t know if she’s usually more on top of her playing. But she seemed to miss more than a few notes (both guitar and vocal).
She also started and then aborted two songs. So I’m not sure if something was up or not. But when she was on, she sounded really good. Her voice has held up well and I’d forgotten was a good songwriter she is.
The first song she aborted was “Wonder Why.” As she tuned her guitar someone behind me muttered “macramé owl” which is the line she stopped on. It’s on my video and I find that very amusing. She switched to a super deep cut. The track “Waves which only appeared on something called Volume 13 The Lucky Issue.
But she’s not above playing the hits too. So the crowd went pretty nuts when she started strumming the opening to “My Sister.”
After playing “Slow Motion,” she started a Minor Alps song (“Away Again”) but stopped after a few lines. I had only recently found out that she had worked with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. he sings on some of her solo work and they did the whole Minor Alps album together.
I’m not sure why she quit the songs, but whatever. She had plenty. And she jumped right into “Feelin’ Massachusetts” which got everyone psyched again. There was a woman up front who knew the words to every song.
I had forgotten how many singles Juliana had released back in the day, and when she started playing “Universal Heart-Beat” I was transported back to rocking out in my car to that song decades ago.
She played a third song from Only Everything, the droney “Simplicity is Beautiful.” I recognized it but only vaguely, It’s near the end of the album and mayhaps I didn’t listen all the way through every time? It sounded good though and I’m going to have to give it another spin. In fact, I’m going to make sure I listen to al of her records that I haven’t paid attention to over the years.
She ended with one of the darker songs in her catalog (actually that is not true at all, he songs can be VERY dark, especially on her more recent albums). But “Choose Drugs” is a song that has always made me uncomfortable because of how stark it is. And it felt even starker with just her on stage singing it like that.
And that was that. She never returned to the unfinished songs. She didn’t even really clean up her stuff (because she’d be playing with Lemonheads a little later). She won over the crowd and left.
Given how long it took Evan and Co. to come out for their set, she could have easily played for twenty more minutes. And I think we all would have loved it.
- Everybody Loves Me But You ¡
- Candy Wrappers ⇒
- Somebody Is Waiting for Me ♣
- Bottles and Flowers ⊗
- Wonder Why ¶ [stopped after a verse and said, “I may come back to that actually.”]
- Waves ß
- My Sister Ü
- Slow Motion ♣
- Away Again (Minor Alps song) [stopped during the first verse I’m going to come back to that one.]
- Feelin’ Massachusetts Ü
- Universal Heart-Beat ⊗
- Simplicity is Beautiful ⊗
- Choose Drugs ♣
¡ hey Babe (1992)
Ü Become What You Are (1993)
♣ Beautiful Creature (1993)
ß Volume 13 The Lucky Issue (1995)
⊗ Only Everything (1995)
⇒ There’s Always Another Girl (2011)
¶ Pussycat (2017)
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