Search - Juliana Hatfield :: Made in China

A Great Review From Marc! (www.julianahatfield.com)

Stephen Adkins | Saint Augustine, Florida | 08/13/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's a real shame when an artist gets unfairly lumped in with a 'movement' or a 'scene', because there's a good chance that their commercial shelf life is going to be cut short the minute that journalists run out of nice things to say about their particular fad. In the case of Juliana Hatfield, the press came up with some silly notion that women hadn't made rock music until the early 1990's and exploited every woman with a distortion pedal who mentioned their libido in any form at all. Back in 1993, she was in every magazine's sidebar when they wrote their inevitable "1993 - Year Of The Woman" article, next to PJ Harvey, Bjork and Liz Phair. And sure, those are all decent artists in their own right, (or at least they were at the time... right Liz?), but besides their recording contracts and genitalia, they couldn't have been further removed from each other. When the mainstream press did give her a proper article they were preoccupied with Juliana's unusually high voice, her virginity and her relationship with Evan Dando... everything but the fact that she was one of the best musicians and songwriters to eek out of the nineties alternative rock boom.



From her early days in the Blake Babies until her recent sojurn with the Some Girls side project, Juliana has concurrently exceeded and confounded the expectations of her loyal fan base. When we expected another jangly pop hit like 1993's megasuccessful "My Sister", we got the dark heaviness of the Only Everything album. On the same day in 2000 we got the gorgeous, laid-back and mostly acoustic Beautiful Creature... as well as the mangled and deafening Total System Failure record. When Atlantic refused to release her 1997 album God's Foot for no discernible reason, Juliana went on an unsuccessful hunger strike. When the critics hailed her as the Next Big Thing, she refused to 'smile for the camera', because she felt she hadn't 'earned it'. She's unpredictable for sure, but she can also bust out with some of the most innovative guitarwork since J Mascis.



Most critics (and some stubborn fans) don't want to look past her major label heyday, but it'd behoove any fan of well crafted pop/rock to do so. If you want some slicker-than-turtlewax pop sheen, you gotta check out In Exile Deo. Want some loud, first-take rock with seriously bipolar lyrics? Man, come over and I'll play you Bed from 1998 and follw it up with last year's insidious Made In China. You won't leave my house the same, I assure you.



If it exists in the rock spectrum, you can bet that Juliana Hatfield has tried it and likely improved upon the formula. So why is she so consistently overlooked? As far as I can tell, the cardinal sin of commercial success is following your heart and writing to please yourself, in which case Juliana will continue to be passed over for artists that will show cleavage and flirt with reporters. You'd think that sticking to your guns, being yourself and having an impeccable resume of records under your belt would be enough to set the world on fire. Nope, the world at large will have to settle for hearing "My Sister" and and the jangly hit "Spin The Bottle" on every 'old school weekend' that Modern Rock stations like to do when they are out of ideas. The rest of us will just have to settle for Juliana Hatfield being our little secret.



Damn."

No glossy production here...

Lovblad | 03/04/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Juliana Hatfield is a very interesting artist that is just fascinating to watch evolve. 2004's In Exile Deo was a 4-star record that finally helped her recover from some of the prior records that were less impressive (Bed, Total System Failure).



But Made In China is the complete opposite of In Exile. Here Juliana totally revamps her sound and really this doesn't sound like any of her other work. I have only had this album for a few weeks and I like it better than her 90s masterpiece "Become What You Are". But then again maybe I'm a bit biased because I love the lo-fi sound.



It's nice to see an artist who changes styles and experiments and I know I'll be more than happy to see what Hatfield comes up with in the future."