Hatfield puts new in an old light
Juliana Hatfield/The Gentlemen/Furvis
 Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts
August 20, 2005
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in The Boston Globe, August 22, 2005

It has been a scant two weeks since the release of Made In China (Ye Olde Records), but Juliana Hatfield treated her latest album almost as an afterthought at the Paradise on Saturday, so much so that she admitted that she didn’t even have any copies to sell at the merchandise table. Waiting until her set was four songs deep before playing anything from it, Hatfield instead covered nearly her entire solo career, touching on China but not necessarily emphasizing it.

While that approach ran the risk of disappointing some of Hatfield’s more loyal fans – who over the years have likely heard most of these songs live already – it served to place her new material in the larger context of her catalogue. Last year’s sprightly “Sunshine” rubbed elbows with the grunting riff of “Dumb Fun” (from 1995’s Only Everything), which was followed by the brief and speedy new “Going Blonde,” and the juxtapositions made for a more unpredictable show than if she had simply played most of China with a handful of older songs.

Backed by bassist Ed Valauskas and drummer Pete Caldes from openers the Gentlemen, Hatfield’s songs were sometimes sharper and less delicate than their original recorded versions, especially on Beautiful Creature songs like “Hotels,” “Choose Drugs” and “Somebody’s Waiting For Me.” Her own guitar was more hit-or-miss, with an indistinct warmth that generally worked better for the slower atmospheric numbers like “Dying Proof” than for full rock-out songs like “Oh.”

By the time she reached “Robot City” (from her Some Girls project) about halfway through, Hatfield seemed tapped out and sluggish. But she not only acknowledged the lull, she turned it around, with “What A Life” and “Swan Song” upping the energy once again and carrying her to the end. She began the first of her two encores with a cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “Because Of You” that worked surprisingly well, proof that after nearly 20 years in the music industry, Juliana Hatfield doesn’t need a stunning voice in order to get to the heart of a song.

Opening act Furvis played a set of occasionally rootsy power pop featuring a fine, straightforward cover of the Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly.” They were followed by a fine set by the Gentlemen, whose snarly Replacements-like drive and deadpan castigations of the audience for their weak applause and checking their watches were equally important to their approach to rock ‘n’ roll.

Back to articles