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She once wrote a song over text message with Rachel Maddow, a micro-story that actually provides deep insight into this adventurous Canadian with an effortlessly capable voice and a finely honed instinct for finding the beating heart of a song.
The source material is brilliant, but the interpretations are so uneven that it’s more like “Juliana Hatfield’s Wax Museum of Songs by The Police”.
Hatfield’s relentless output is given some inventive production, and I have to pause to carefully listen. There’s a lot to unpack, sonically and lyrically, and it refuses to fade into the background.
This beguiling set of intricate songs could have come out of a Tin Pan Alley songbook, so calling them old-fashioned is somewhat incomplete. And like all the best fluffy shiny pop led by a heavenly female voice, it hides many razor-sharp barbs.
Such grand disaffection from this US/AUS pairing … my new favorite Kurt and Courtney, providing the weirdest yet most natural male/female vocal duets.
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