Juliana Hatfield - Beautiful Creature

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Music reviews of Beautiful Creature

Music Review: highly unstable declarations
Rating: 4 Stars

Since I was under the impression Juliana Hatfield was "acoustic-y," "Daniel" effectively skewed my expectations of the rest of album. "Close Your Eyes" only confused the matter more when it turned out to be composed of a lullaby acoustic arrangement and appropriate almost-Beatles melodies. The lyrics on *Beautiful Creature* are often irrelevant in the face of such melodies; "Close Your Eyes" holds my attention not on the level of language but on the level of sound, entirely familiar and relaxing without listening to a single word.

The clever language and unexpected musical turns of *Beautiful Creature* give it an almost indy feel, or at least disguises the fact that Juliana Hatfield is a veteran of modern rock and member of the Blake Babies. "Choose Drugs" has an indy vocal drone to carry it to its conclusion of "I say it's me or drugs / You choose drugs." "Cool Rock Boy" unfolds with a even beat and layered vocal treatment. It's followed by the infectiously jangling "Don't Rush Me," which is one of the best tracks on the album. "Easy Way Out" is similar to the Sheryl Crow mold of flatly combined vocals and bawdy distorted guitar. However, Hatfield addresses the subject at hand more directly than Crow is prone to, and the song concludes abruptly where I would expect a belabored fade out.

In the absence of its musical arrangements and repeats of vital lyrics most of the album would come off as fragile teenage poetry, but that is part of its allure. Hatfield does not engage in emotional sap lightly or often, instead penning lines like "Will you give this to my mother" that at once say nothing but infer everything about the relationships that she portrays. Musically the album gets more and more mellow as it gets farther away from "Daniel," with the last track opening with an unadorned electric guitar that might as well be an acoustic and passing chords that swell up from nowhere and fade just as quickly. A calm band treatment arrives for the first chorus which asks "Do you cry in the dark because it's easier to be alone than to talk?" Again we're faced with a turn of phrase that says absolutely nothing but implies so much; is it that we can only be alone in the dark, or that the dark muffles voices as well as it does light?

*Beautiful Creature* fits just right into my record collection, either as what I was expecting from Nina Gordon's album or as what I thought the Murmurs should have sounded like. Juliana Hatfield is making music that is as easy to peg as it is emotionally elusive, and I don't even know enough about her to say if this is a natural evolution or a step in a new direction. Either way, it makes for good listening.

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