Juliana Hatfield – There’s Always Another Girl review

At its outset, Juliana Hatfield’s “There’s Always Another Girl” sounds exactly how you might expect. It opens with a female, solo voice and an acoustic guitar pretty much completing the image of singer/songwriter her name evokes. The lyrics are brimming with a lazy angst, and halfway through she tops the track with an easy little piano melody. At best, people will be grateful that the album is delivering exactly what they imagine. Getting what you pay for feels good – at least that’s the reason people go to Chipotle.

Then suddenly, like a flower unfurling in a high definition time lapsed image on Planet Earth, this album blossoms. Leaving the female Chris Martin shtick behind, the songs flirt with a post-grunge 90’s rock sound. Her work is the essence of Pavement littered with Garbage. The track on the album that packs the most bratty bent is oddly enough one in which she whines about not wanting to go out. “I don’t think I’m drunk enough” to go jumping around among “perfume, cologne, sweat and pheromones,” is the gist of the tune, but it throws around so much energy and satisfying guitar riffing that it will inevitably become an anthem for going out. At least for those of us who can no longer listen to Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” as we fix our eyeliner.

Hatfield really crafts a place for her lazy gen X angst to brood, and it’s evident after two listens that these songs won’t leave your head for some time. Tunes like “Candy Wrappers” and “Sex and Drugs” stick in your brain like the girl power honey they’re laced with. There is definitely an experienced songwriter behind all of this, although her seasoned career does not diminish the music’s cute factor. It’s almost like Gwen Stefani never started having babies and quit making listenable music.

Many listeners who gravitate towards a more vibrant sound will latch onto this album while still needing to skip the first track, but I hope Juliana Hatfield doesn’t take that too personally. After all, I do that with The White Album every time.