Walk away? Thankfully, Juliana Hatfield hasn’t
Kevin Bronson on
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It wasn’t far into Juliana Hatfield’s set at Largo at the Coronet on Saturday night when she peered into the darkness and addressed the three-quarters-full house. “The record company will get mad if I don’t mention that I have a new record out,” she said wryly. “The joke is, I’m the record company.” And without missing a beat, she went on to acknowledge that, yes, she’d used that line wherever she’s toured behind her new album, “How to Walk Away.”
At 41 and on her own in most ways imaginable, Hatfield has danced this dance before — you know it, and she knows you know it, and you know she knows you know it. Those same layers of awareness (along with Andy Chase’s production) make the sharply observant confessionals on “How to Walk Away” some of her strongest in a solo career that began in 1991. Is it the highest possible form of cynicism, or merely perfectly cultivated forthrightness? I can’t figure.
She’s leaving nothing to mystery these days, that’s for sure. Her memoir, “When I Grow Up,” comes out Monday — she talked a bit about it here — and her blog, “An Arm and a Leg,” lays everything on the table. If in the ’90s she was a songstress that inspired a million crushes (although, ahem, I don’t personally know anybody), she is now the model friend practicing full disclosure. Who knows that you know that she knows you had a thing for her.
Saturday’s show was a tour de force hindered only by the setting — a booze-less (liquor license coming in two weeks, I heard), sit-down theater in which the performers could not see their shrouded-in-darkness devotees. It had all the trappings of a high school assembly (“No talking!”), which would have been OK for an acoustic performance but was antithetical to a concert given by a five-piece rock band, especially for a $25 ticket.
As opposed to last summer’s date at the El Rey Theatre, when in an opening slot for Buffalo Tom she appeared frail and tentative, Hatfield was vibrant and confident Saturday. Her voice remains 14 instead of 41, and the room’s pristine sound favored the quintet’s sturdy arrangements. And just when you thought she might forgo the big hit, she delivered it, doing “My Sister” (1993) solo, with some nifty chops on the electric.
The opening act, Australian major-label darling Lenka, had more charm than songs. Move along.
||| Hatfield signs her memoir at 7 tonight at Book Soup.
My inner 15 year old is pissed that I didn’t make it to this show!
[…] rock. She can do it all with an open heart and open fingering on the fretboard. She’d dazzle us and then she would disappear for another couple years to write another new album. Being strung […]