Weird

Chronique

A year before Weird, Juliana Hatfield delivered an album-length Valentine to her childhood pop idol Olivia Newton-John. Appropriately, some echoes of AM pop linger on Weird -- it's there in the occasional wash of analog synth and the insistent hooks, and it's there in exuberant closer "Do It to Music," a love letter to the complex joys of pop -- but the album is barbed by design, a return to the ornery personal pop that's been Hatfield's métier in the 21st century. The album title alone hints at what Weird is about: the feeling of not quite fitting in with the world at large. Hatfield chronicles those twisted, contradictory emotions of ostracization not with a heavy sigh but defiance. Working largely alone -- old colleagues Freda Love Smith and Todd Philips show up to play drums on a couple of tracks -- Hatfield winds up creating a tribute to the virtues of solitary seclusion. Sometimes, she tackles this subject head on -- the de facto title track, "It's So Weird," is something of a manifesto -- but she spends as much time singing about the reasons why she's retreating to her own world. "Everything's for Sale" and "Paid to Lie," two sly protests that are tangentially tied to her 2017 anti-Trump album Pussycat -- provide two potent reasons for rejecting modern society, but these sardonic tunes are surrounded by songs of undiluted pleasure and comforting melancholy. What holds these seemingly conflicted emotions together is the robust sound of Weird. Far from reclusive, Weird is a gregarious, idiosyncratic pop album that invites the listener to meet it on its own terms, but Hatfield is absolutely fine if it's rejected. She's cool being on her own.

© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo