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Jung at heart (continued)




"I still don’t have a clue about how you get yourself across to people," Hatfield remarks over lunch at the S&S Deli in Inman Square, just a few doors down from her apartment. "I still don’t know how to do that. I don’t interact well socially. I’m kind of awkward, and I feel like I’m just going to let people down if I talk too much. I’m just really shy, and people tend to see it as me being aloof or something. I know I can come off that way in interviews. I mean, when I was on Atlantic and getting on MTV and stuff, I didn’t really like the attention. Honestly, it just didn’t really suit me or my personality. I prefer a more low-key lifestyle."

What Hatfield has learned over the past decade is how to put more of herself into her songs. Her lyrics, in particular, have become more revealing and introspective with each new album. Gone for the most part are the obvious fictional veils that made even a confessional song like "My Sister" (she has no sister, though she has a younger brother) seem disingenuous. And the Hatfield who in 1993 proclaimed she’d never had sex now seems comfortable not just writing about romance but exploring the messy ins and outs of relationships, whether they involve family ("Daddy, are you asleep/Your son’s a mess and your daughter’s a freak" from "Because We Love You"), friends ("I’m not going to answer the phone/I’m not home/Because Jamie’s back in town" from "Jamie’s in Town"), or lovers ("I’ll wake from a dream and wonder if you miss me. . . . I’ll see my mistake and wish that you were with me" from "Some Rainy Day"). There’s even a shocker or two: "I know I’m a fair-weather fuck/I only want you when you’re on top" ("It Should’ve Been You").

Not that all or even any of the above lyrics should be taken as autobiographical. But there’s a confessional quality to the songs on In Exile Deo that Hatfield’s never achieved before. "I think I reveal a lot in my songs. And I do think music is a great way to communicate. In the past couple of years, I’ve been in Jungian therapy, and a lot of these songs were inspired by that — by looking at things from my childhood and stuff. ‘Sunshine’ is kind of about my childhood and adolescence, feeling isolated and retreating from painful things. I’m realizing that I’ve been sleeping through my life, and I want change that. I want to start living my life rather than retreating from it. It’s just about fixing the things that are hard to accept about myself. You can fix things. I used to have eating disorders in my teens and 20s, and I pretty much overcame that. That was a big thing in my life for many many years. You get to the point where you’re either going to stop doing the things that are hurting your or you’re not going to be able to move on in your life."

Perhaps because of its introspective nature, the material on In Exile Deo tends to fall on the mellower side of the pop/rock terrain that Hatfield’s been working since the Blake Babies. It’s by no means an acoustic album, but softly strummed chords, jangly melodies, subtle keyboard textures, and mid-tempo grooves dominate the 13 tracks. There’s the softly sung ballad "Tomorrow Never Comes" (a Dot Allison cover), with its spare, hand-picked acoustic-guitar-and-violin backdrop; there’s also the bluesy, Beatle-esque guitar bashing of the angry "Dirty Dog." But the give-and-take between verses that float on a bed of gently layered vocal harmonies and guitar arpeggios and choruses driven by forceful power chords that characterizes "Tourist" and "Sunshine" — songs that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Blake Babies set — is more the norm on In Exile Deo.

"I know the album is kind of slow and mellow," Hatfield concedes, "but that wasn’t intentional. It’s kind of a fault in me that I can’t think ahead and I don’t conceptualize at all. It’s always just whatever songs that have come together in that period of time when I’m working on an album because of what’s going on in my life. It’s kind of like recording reality. I kind of wish there had been more rockers. ‘Get in Line’ is the fastest, most-rocking song on the album. And that’s the last one I wrote."

And the album’s title? "It just kind of sounded good. It’s a play on ‘In excelsis Deo.’ Plus, the artist is in exile — in exile from society. A lot of the songs on the album talk about a form of exile, just being alone and suffering through a period where start to assess your life to see what’s wrong with you, and you decide that you’re either going to change or your life is going to continue on the path of doing the same bad things over and over. Then comes a period of reconstruction or therapy or whatever. And that’s a form of exile, because if you’re going to try to quit drinking or drugs or something, no one can help you. You just have to do the work and confront the harsh realities of yourself and your past."

Juliana Hatfield joins the Violent Femmes, Presidents of the United States of America, the Rapture, the Von Bondies, the Stills, Stellastarr, Elefant, Laguardia, Midtown, the Fire Theft, Just Jack, the Lot Six, Streetdogs, the Unseen, the Explosion, and Runner and the Thermodynamics on the bill for this year’s Phoenix/WFNX Best Music Poll party, Thursday June 3 on Lansdowne Street in Boston. Tickets are $20; call (617) 423-NEXT.

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Issue Date: May 21 - 27, 2004
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