Become what you are
The Juliana Hatfield Three
Festival Records
Reviewed by Karen Fredericks
In "Feelin' Massachusetts", on Become what you are, Juliana Hatfield complains that her home town, Boston, bores her. Boring or not, the city is now producing some of the most impressive alternative music around — and I believe that's because it's not all boys holding the guitars. Besides Hatfield, Boston has been home to the Throwing Muses, Belly, the Breeders, the Pixies and the Lemonheads, a rather more gender-balanced line-up than that bunch of bare-chested boys from Seattle — Nirvana, Mudhoney, Alice in Chains et al.
According to a recent interview, Juliana Hatfield is "not a feminist, but ...". According to her lyrics on Become what you are, she resents being sex-stereotyped ("Supermodel"), deplores sexual violence ("A dame with a rod"), values female energy ("My sister"), claims the right to express her sexuality ("Spin the bottle"), loves her independence and hates dependence on men ("Little pieces") and, above all, is struggling to become what she believes she can be.
Perhaps, to Hatfield, "feminist" suggests too earnest a disposition for the rockin', post-punk milieu to which her music otherwise belongs. But although she eschews the label she does not deny the impact of gender in her lyrics. The result is a collection of songs which do more than feel good, like the Lemonheads, or feel familiar, like Nirvana.
Because Hatfield obliges herself to be honest, she also admits that she sees things somewhat differently than the boys in bands. Her anger that this should be so adds a further dimension to her interpretation of thrashing guitar pop. "It's a mystery, how I seem to be, something less than myself", she replies in "Little pieces", to the "just live the moment" anthems of her male counterparts.
Become what you are is Juliana Hatfield's second album. It is tougher, both lyrically and musically, than the first, Hey babe, a collection of love and loss songs which she produced with an ad hoc collection of Boston musicians.
Hatfield has now consolidated a band, the Juliana Hatfield Three, with whom she toured Australia supporting Belly earlier this year. The Three — Hatfield on guitar, Dean Fisher on bass and Todd Phillips on drums — lay a good foundation for Hatfield's expressive voice and newly significant lyrics. Although there is something rather too restrained about the production on this record, I'm sure it will be remedied live.