Search - Juliana Hatfield :: The White Broken Line: live recordings

JH's long-overdue first live CD rocks!

David Ragan | 11/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An eclectic selection mixing pretty tunes and rowdy tunes, this CD showcases Juliana Hatfield's beautiful voice and guitar mastery. That she's not a superstar is one of rock's great injustices but at least she enjoys the freedom to do quirky things like including "Ten Foot Pole" on her first live CD. For those of us who somehow missed the "Beautiful Creature/Total System Failure" tour, it's nice to finally hear "My Protegee" live! My only complaint is that we hear the opening chords of "Stay Awake" after "Down on Me" before the volume is faded out in favor of "My Protegee" (in case anyone missed it, this is a compilation of tunes from several concerts.) I wanted to hear "Stay Awake" as well!"

Not what it could have been.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 01/25/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

""The White Broken Line" is a live album, collecting tracks mostly from Juliana Hatfield's 2005 tour (with a couple from 2002), with Hatfield backed by her touring band of Ed Valauskas (bass) and Pete Caldes (drums). Plucking songs from different shows grants the luxury for better performances and diversity often not found in tours behind a given album, but as a longtime fan, I found myself remarkably disappointed with this release.



The nice thing about pulling songs from different shows is that while you lose the integrity of the individual performance, you get the luxury of populating the album any way seen appropriate. Given this, it was kind of a downer that while a number of live favorites were here ("Necessito", "Down on Me", "Somebody is Waiting for Me" for example), a number of them were noticably absent-- "Stay Awake", "Going Blonde", "Dirty Dog", "Daniel", "Sellout", "What a Life" and "Dumb Fun" all got played at one time or another during the shows these were taken from (I was at all but one of them), and with the album only filling about half the CD's capacity (clocking in under 45 minutes), there was certainly room for a number of these.



As far as the material itself, it's mostly well executed, although I do find that it seems to be missing something that's in the live performance-- let's face it, punky music never really gets its live energy captured well on record ("Get in Line") and this is a fine example of that. There's still a number of fine performances ("Down on Me" is pretty much always a winner, "Hotels" has a great funky backbeat, "Oh" benefits from NOT having "Made in China" styled production), but by and large, this is something I rarely listen to.



Given Juliana Hatfield's falling out of the public eye, I suspect anyone reading this is going to buy it anyway-- she's one of my absolute favorite performers, but I found this one lacking."

Refreshing!

sprint | USA | 01/30/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

""The White Broken Line" is arguably Julianna Hatfield at her best! Live recordings are always a prime opportunity to break new ground as well as revisit old favorites and this cd has plenty of both! What everyone loves about power trios is that there's nowhere for any of the instrumentalists to hide-- every note/beat they play is going to show, so they have to make the most of each one-- and what we are reminded again and again is that Julianna can really sing with a unique style all her own and play guitar with lots of imagination and creativity! To her credit, she channels a lot of the same energy & sensibilities as a young Kurt Cobain as well as the Blake Babies but effectively transcends them as she builds off of them. The only thing I would like to see more than White Broken Line, part 2 (and maybe she should include some of the tracks that other reviewers are whining about as being "missing" from this one) is for Juliana to put herself to the test the same way that John Frusciante did: 6 albums in 6 months (or whatever it was)- I think it could be brilliant stuff! Well- how about it, Juliana?

"