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Feeling
It
Sept
12, 2003—It’s
doubtful Juliana Hatfield, Freda Love, and Heidi Gluck named
their band Some Girls after the Rolling Stones song. They
don’t seem like the type who’d give the likes of Mick
Jagger money, clothes, jewelry, or a lethal dose. The
foursquare drumming, lite-grit rhythm guitar, pulsing bass,
dollops of slide and lap-steel six-string, and direct pop
vocal melodies just seem too grounded to be the work of
women who’d tolerate a rooster like Mick. Indeed, on their
group’s debut, Feel It (Koch), they simply sound like some girls — or better,
some adept women musicians — who got together to have a
good time and record.
They
also sound like some girls who despite their collegiate
indie-rock pasts have been listening to some really rootsy
music. The keyboards and harmonica on "Almost
True" sound learned from the Band, and the number’s
broken-love story would sound just as natural coming from a
country singer. Then there’s the version of the long-dead
bluesman Robert Johnson’s "Malted Milk" that
closes Feel It. Although the music misses the dire acuity of Johnson’s
deft picking and slicing slide, as well as the taint of
misery that rings in his voice, there’s nonetheless
something lovely and touching about their version. Driven by
Hatfield’s spare guitar chords and Love’s simple,
restrained drumming and colored by Gluck’s lap steel, the
arrangement is a blackboard for Hatfield’s vocals. She
sings in her softest, roundest register, letting notes hang
with a blend of misery and resignation that’s a very adult
contrast to the girlish chirp that’s sometimes been a
wearying quality in her earlier recordings. Actually, Some
Girls boast some of the best vocal performances that
Hatfield has recorded, like the breathy melody she carves
through "Necessito" aided by the harmonies from
Love and Gluck.
Some
Girls are playing the Met Café in Providence
on Tuesday and
the
Paradise
here in Boston
on Wednesday,
right on the heels of Feel
It’s release last Tuesday. Although they’re a new
band, Love and Hatfield have shared the stage many times in
the past. Both, along with guitarist John Strohm, were
members of the Blake Babies, a
Boston
outfit that was
equally loved and hated for its rickety, off-kilter songs
and stage persona. As with the case with Galaxie 500,
another quirky Boston group who played the clubs in the mid
to late 1980s, the Blake Babies’ cult of admirers kept
growing after their break-up, and it did so even through
Hatfield’s MTV-level solo career.
In
2000, a full decade after the Blake Babies split, Love
instigated a reunion and they recorded their best album, God
Bless the Blake Babies (Zoë/Rounder), which benefited
from skills improved by experience all around. Hatfield had
recorded acclaimed sugar pop like Hey Babe and Only Everything
for the Mammoth and Atlantic labels; Strohm and Love had
continued on in the pricklier Antenna and then split, with
Strohm heading on to solo work and Love helping to form the
rhythmic and rootsy Mysteries of Life, who at times sound
like a funkier early Rolling Stones.
The
release of God Bless
the Blake Babies sparked a reunion tour, and that led to
Some Girls. "I really liked the energy of the Blake
Babies being back together again," says Hatfield when
she and Love phone from a conference room at their record
label. "It really felt great at first, but then the
differences that John and I used to have started to make
themselves felt again." So after the tour, it was once
again finito for the Blake Babies. But Hatfield and Love
kept collaborating. "When I went to Indiana to record demos
of these songs with Freda, we wanted a bass player for the
sessions, so Freda hired Heidi."
"Heidi
was a local musician around Indianapolis
who had gotten a
great reputation really quickly," Love explains.
"She’s an excellent multi-instrumentalist."
"It
felt so good playing with Heidi," Hatfield continues,
"that we asked if she wanted to be in the band."
The
Providence and
Boston dates are the two
opening concerts on a national tour that will continue
through mid October, but Hatfield, Love, and Gluck are
stage-ready. Love has been busy with Mysteries of Life.
Gluck’s other band, the Pieces, opened ex-Lemonhead Evan
Dando’s recent comeback tour. And Hatfield returned to her
first instrument, bass, as part of Dando’s band.
"For
me, leaving a major-record label and floating out of the
public eye has been uplifting, because it’s enabled me to
focus on my music," Hatfield says. "There’s no
pressure, no commercial constraints on what I do or anything
like that. I’ve been working with Zoë and Rounder [which
released her solo Beautiful Creature and a disc by her group Juliana’s Pony in
2000], and they’re really great about letting me do what I
want."
She’s
also returned to an early creative love, painting and
drawing, and she was part of the "Between Rock and an Art Place" show of
visual art by local musicians at
Cambridge’s
Zeitgeist Gallery early this year. "I started out as a very
artistic child and gave up visual art when I discovered
guitar. It’s another really fulfilling creative pursuit.
Between that and the Some Girls record and my solo albums,
it’s all really good to be living a creative life. I need to
do it all. I haven’t found the right avenue where it’s all
falling seamlessly into place, but it all feels right."
—Ted
Drozdowski
Reprinted from the Boston
Phoenix
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