Juliana Hatfield 'How to Walk Away' album

Juliana Hatfield will celebrate the release of How To Walk Away – her 10th solo album in a remarkable 20-year-career – and the publication of her memoir, entitled When I Grow Up, with a performance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on August 25th and a U.S. tour. The tour launches September 9th at IOTA in Washington, DC. Other highlights include shows at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom (September 12th), Boston’s Brattle Theater (September 13th), and Los Angeles’ new Largo (September 27th).

On October 10th, the acclaimed singer/songwriter will appear at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, England. In this special evening, Hatfield will provide a highly personal look at her life, weaving passages from When I Grow Up (which will be published by Wiley & Sons on September 29th) in amidst songs from throughout her career.

“This Lonely Love,” the album’s lead single, features Richard Butler (The Psychedelic Furs) on vocals and goes for adds at radio on July 28th. Hatfield will perform on NPR’s “World Café” on September 10th and will play a set at New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Café on October 23rd as part of the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival 2008.

How To Walk Away, produced by Andy Chase (of revered alt-rock/pop band Ivy) and due out August 19th on Hatfield’s own Ye Olde Records (distributed via RED), is already eliciting widespread acclaim. “If you have only…4 minutes, 23 seconds: Listen to Juliana Hatfield’s winning take on a failed relationship, ‘My Baby…’ from her shimmering new CD,” says O The Oprah Magazine while venuszine declared “Ah, Miss Hatfield, you make loneliness feel so good,” praising the “sexy and funky seventies vibe” of “This Lonely Love.”

In When I Grow Up, Hatfield chronicles her extraordinary journey, from her teenage beginnings in the pioneering indie-rock combo Blake Babies, and iconic rise to alternative solo stardom, to the past decade’s stunning streak of increasingly mature, critically acclaimed albums. Whether detailing the origin of her songs, her battles with clinical depression or her quest to find purpose after all of her dreams had seemingly come true, Hatfield writes in the same engaging fashion her fans have loved for years – spirited, witty, and heartbreakingly sincere.

tour dates
9/9 Washington, DC - IOTA
9/10 Philadelphia, PA - World Café Live w/special guest Hayden
9/12 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom w/special guest Hayden
9/13 Boston, MA - Brattle Theater w/special guest Hayden
9/23 Seattle, WA - Triple Door
9/24 Portland, OR - Aladdin
9/25 San Francisco, CA - Café Du Nord
9/27 Los Angeles, CA - Largo
10/10 London, England - Queen Elizabeth Hall
10/23 New York, NY - Housing Works Bookstore Café
(additional dates will be announced shortly)

biography
“She was a willowy beauty with charming shyness and a slightly tragic air.” So says Brett Milano, of Juliana Hatfield in her starting-out days, in his recent book The Sound Of Our Town: A History Of Boston Rock+Roll.

Juliana Hatfield – no less an intriguing, compelling character today – has been working as a recording artist for twenty years. With the release of How To Walk Away, her 10th solo album, she again proves herself to be an uncompromising artist with impeccable pop instincts, a disdain for artifice, a completely original voice, and a contrarian streak.

Starting in her teens, with her first band, critically-acclaimed, Boston-based indie rock outfit the Blake Babies (who self-released their first album before moving on to the North Carolina-based independent Mammoth Records), Hatfield has paved her own unique way, evolving with each subsequent record. She signed to Atlantic Records as a solo artist and racked up a string of mid-nineties modern-rock hits (“My Sister,” “Spin The Bottle,” “Universal Heartbeat”) before leaving the label in 1998. Hatfield was then the first signing to Zoe Records, a Rounder Records imprint. Zoe’s fourth and final Hatfield release was 2004’s In Exile Deo, named one of that year’s 10 best albums by Jon Pareles in The New York Times.

In 2005 Hatfield came full circle, back to full DIY independence, starting her own label (Ye Olde Records) and releasing the catchy but somewhat abrasive Made In China (“her most urgent, refreshingly unpolished output in years,” said Time Out New York).

How To Walk Away, also on Ye Olde Records, finds Hatfield singing in top form. “Finally,” she says, “I feel like my voice has grown into itself and I’m not struggling so much against its little-girl-ness.”

The albumfeatures guest appearances by two other distinctive vocalists: Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler on “This Lonely Love” and Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws on “Such A Beautiful Girl.” Other featured guest musicians were Fountains Of Wayne guitarist Jody Porter (some lead guitar); Jeff Hill, of Rufus Wainwright’s band, on bass; and Ethan Eubanks of the Grey Race on drums. Tracy Bonham guested on violin, and Jason Hatfield, Juliana’s brother, played piano on two songs, which he co-wrote (“Remember November” and “Such A Beautiful Girl”).

How To Walk Away was recorded at Stratosphere Sound, the NYC studio co-owned by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne), James Iha (formerly of Smashing Pumpkins), and Andy Chase (of revered alt-rock/pop band Ivy), who produced the album. How To Walk Away is evocative, layered, and unhurried yet Chase has managed to retain Hatfield’s essential rawness of spirit, smoothing out some rough edges but not all. Witness, for example, the loose, danceable “Now I’m Gone,” sung (and played) by Hatfield in one inspired improvisational take. And while she has frequently drawn from personal experience in the past, these songs are some of her most candid ever.

“The songs are very autobiographical,” says Hatfield, “although I do recognize that whenever I’m writing about myself I am, in a sense, writing about - or for - everyone else; I know that other people out there are just like me.”

Walking away – and the loneliness that sometimes results – is a recurring theme. But rather than agonizing over a sad state of affairs, How To Walk Away takes a fatalistic attitude toward relationships. It is set in a vaguely purgatorial post-relationship - or maybe pre-relationship - landscape. The songs’ protagonists don’t expect to find wisdom, serenity and forgiveness (there are no Hollywood happy endings here) but at the same time they know that understanding and self-awareness may come.

Fatalism’s flip side is faith, and even in an outwardly sad song like “Such A Beautiful Girl” (“She’s such a beautiful girl/but she lives in an ugly world”), hope is not dead; the girl of the title waits patiently for a future that she knows - odds are - will be better than where she finds herself now.

Hatfield’s biting sense of humor comes out in “Just Lust,” a post-feminist anthem that turns the idea of women as the emotional, needy sex on its head, addressing an emotional, needy male.

The bittersweet yet life-affirming “Shining On” — mixed by veteran hit-making producer David Kahne - exhibits a hard-won resilience in the face of disappointment and betrayal. If there is still a slightly tragic air about Hatfield, it is balanced by this sensibility.

“I feel really lucky to have made a living at this for so long,” she says. “I love what I do; making my music brings me joy and fulfillment, over and over again. And I’ll continue to do it until I don’t love it anymore.”

Hatfield’s artistic growth has been paralleled in other realms as well. An esteemed lyricist, she segues to prose with her upcoming autobiography, which will be published by Wiley and Sons in 2009. And she continues to expand her label, which released Frank Smith’s Heavy Handed Peace and Love in 2007 as well as her collaboration with the band, Sittin’ in a Tree, a six-song EP.

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Juliana Hatfield - How to Walk Away