The Real Congregation

Listen, if you don’t already know about Juliana Hatfield, I’m not even sure where to begin with you.

If you are familiar with her work and history, then you are no doubt well-adjusted to the frustration of following her, not just because of all of her career-defining artistic curveballs, but also the sheer desperation of that nagging, recurring thought that pops into your head every time you play one of her records: “how on earth is someone this good so relatively unknown?”

In a nutshell, Juliana Hatfield’s background is as follows: her first band, The Blake Babies, self-released their first album in 1987, and since then, Juliana has jumped between stints in The Lemonheads, Some Girls, and her own solo work. She’s had huge megahits with “My Sister”, “Spin The Bottle” and “Universal Heartbeat”, and she’s famously had more problems with record labels than nearly any artist in recent memory. A shining example was Atlantic Records rejecting the release of her still unheard masterpiece God’s Foot, which resulted in Juliana allegedly embarking on a hunger strike until she was released from her contract. Since then, Hatfield has released records with alarming frequency, obsessively blogging her thoughts and even more obsessively deleting said blogs. She’s also released a very well-received memoir titled When I Grow Up that should be required reading for absolutely anyone that assumes that being a rock musician is glamorous in any way. And of course, she may be the only female musician to be so closely scrutinized for her lack of sexual encounters, as when she revealed the fact that she was still a virgin by the mid-nineties to Interview magazine. This thwarted most people’s assumptions that she’d been the romantic interest of Evan Dando, who was her friend and constant collaborator at the time.

And to this day, that’s what most people remember about that period for Juliana – that she wasn’t having sex. Not that she had an almost unrealistically warm soprano voice that could seemingly do absolutely anything, and definitely not that she was one of the best rock guitarists that anyone was going to find. Can you believe that? The public didn’t even really delve into all of the wordplay and references in her increasingly brilliant and harmonically rich songs, and once Atlantic decided to put their money into Jewel instead of Juliana, most of the public simply did not follow her career any further. This situation has infamously left her with one of the most die-hard cults in pop music, and while their numbers may be slight, their obsession and level of scrutiny can only be rivaled by that of the Dylanologists – and that’s only a maybe.

Her new album, There’s Always Another Girl, is not going to make living with her level of obscurity any easier for you. It’s such a phenomenal record that if this material were in the hands of a lesser artist, they’d go completely Brian Wilson-sandbox-era bonkers while making it. It’s so wonderful that it very nearly defies any reasonable description, and if I were to give you a big list of the albums merits, you might well think that her label is paying me to sing it’s praises.

I can assure you that’s not the case, though. As proof, I can point to the fact that there is no label behind There’s Always Another Girl, no PR machine, no managerial tactics. Nothing of the sort. In actuality, this new Juliana Hatfield album is a completely fan-funded project. The story goes that Juliana herself started a Kickstarter-esque pledge drive through the site Pledge Music, asking for a relatively small amount of money to help with the completion of her new album. And considering that most hardcore Hatfield fanatics are often left to feel as if they are the only one who truly “gets” Juliana, when her campaign easily cleared over 400% of the originally requested amount, even Ms. Hatfield herself was humbled and amazed by the outpouring of support that came in such a short period of time.

The alternately resigned, invigorated and desperate vibe of this album is greater than the sum of it’s parts, and for that reason, it becomes very hard to describe There’s Always Another Girl. At points, the guitars are reminiscent of Rolling Stones influence, and her oh-my-god-what-the-hell-was-that solos only occasionally take the center stage that they so deserve, but that helps bring a sort of balance to this album that Hatfield’s albums often do not have. For example, her last full-length release Peace & Love was controversial to many critics as they found it to be a polarizingly sparse and confessional piece, much as her 2000 album Total System Failure was lambasted by those same critics for being over the top in it’s guttural rock heaviness and lyrics that let no one safe from their relentless ire. And while all of those aforementioned critics really oughta lighten the fuck up, this album is the perfect blend of everything that Juliana already does best, while amping up the melodies, harmonies and moods to degrees that even some of her most ardent followers probably couldn’t have predicted. Of course, the fact that all of these melodies are so immediate that you’ll be utterly convinced you’ve heard these songs somewhere else doesn’t really hurt. (See “Someone Else Problem” and “Batteries” for reference).

From the opening track of the detached and pleasantly complacent “Change The World” all the way to those ending hammer-on’s found halfway through “Thousands Of Guitars”, There’s Always Another Girl is not just a great album for someone to be making twenty-four years into their career, it’s arguably the best album that Juliana Hatfield has ever delivered. And I’d go as far as saying that it might be the best rock album of the year, and that’s the really gutting part of this whole saga: this album is full of definitive, anthemic and breathtaking material, and due to Juliana Hatfield’s Do It Yourself (With A Little Help From Friends) philosophy, there’s a good chance that it might be relegated to staying a well-kept secret within her current fanatical listening circles.

Play this album through just one time and then try to imagine something this good falling through the cracks. I guarantee you that you’ll be disgusted to your very core at such a possibility. There’s Always Another Girl is everything that a record needs to be in 2011, and you’ll be proud of yourself for being in on the ground floor.