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CD Reviews by Mary-Lynn McEwen Juliana Hatfield Beautiful Creature Island Juliana’s Pony Total System Failure Island · Two albums from Ms. Hatfield in two different incarnations. Beautiful Creature – sweet little lilting ballads, soft tuneless vocals, purty purty words, blue-eyed babies and dreams. Boring! Next! Now this is more like it. Did you love her when she sang "Nirvana" with the Blake Babies? Sang about wanting to fuck things up? Good news – she’s fucked things up here in the finest of styles. Juliana’s Pony: Total System Failure. Eeeww! The title alone sounds more interesting, doesn’t it? And sure enough, the songs start with distortion and end with a bang, beginning with her passed out on a factory floor, making weapons that could be verbal judging from the way she slings words like bullets. From then on she zooms into a parody of lock-step lives, mundane events, comfortable couples who settle for prescription sex while using their other half to get chores done, and all the while the lean guitars pick their teeth with amplifiers and distortion pedals. And the music stays sharp, rubbing up against a bright darkness that helps Hatfield explore everything from marriage to road rage with a fresh sarcasm that would have done William Burroughs proud. Beautiful Creature - 2 Juliana’s Pony - 4

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