Description
Label Review.
2017 album.
Our Overview.
“I wasn’t planning on making a record,” says Juliana Hatfield, of her new ‘Pussycat’ album. In fact, she thought her songwriting career was on hiatus, and that she had nothing left to say in song form; that she had finally said it all after two decades as a recording artist.
But then the presidential election happened. “All of these songs just started pouring out of me. And I felt an urgency to record them, to get them down, and get them out there.” From start to finish - recording through mixing—the whole thing took a total of just twelve and a half days to complete.“It was a blur. It was cathartic,” says Hatfield. “I almost don’t even understand what happened in there, or how it came together so smoothly, so quickly. I was there, directing it all, managing it, getting it all done, but I was being swept along by some force that was driving me. The songs had a will, they forced themselves on me, or out of me, and I did what they told me to do. Even my hands - it felt like they were not my hands. I played bass differently - looser, more confident, better.”
‘Pussycat’ is being released into a very tense, divided and inflamed America. The songs are reflective of that atmosphere - angry (‘When You’re A Star’), defiant (‘Touch You Again’), disgusted (‘Rhinoceros’), but also funny (‘Short-Fingered Man’), reflective (‘Wonder Why’), righteous (‘Heartless’) and even hopeful (‘Impossible Song’) with its chorus of “What if we tried to get along/and sing an impossible song”.