Juliana Hatfield: Some Girls Like to Rock

At Rhino’s, an all-ages music club in Bloomington, Ind., the kids are ready to rock. And so are their parents. The headliner, Some Girls, are here for an off-the-radar tour warm-up show. With their new pop-rock album Feel It just released on Koch, there is both freshness and familiarity in the air. With the addition of bassist Heidi Gluck, the post-Blake Babies songwriting partnership of Juliana Hatfield and Freda Love has morphed into a road-ready rock band. Launching into its first song, Some Girls rev up and shift into overdrive. Their time has come and it feels like a surprise party. Calling from the road a week later, Hatfield explains the roots of the new band. “Freda and I were talking about working together in some capacity other than the Blake Babies,” she says of the partner she’s collaborated with since 1986. “We decided to write some songs and came up with some really good stuff. There was a slow natural process of the band idea blooming as the songs came together.” Long-distance songwriting through the mail led to enough material for a touring band. For Love, who considers herself a novice songwriter, it was a new creative scenario. “As the process unfolded and we sent tapes back and forth, she was real encouraging about my ideas. Juliana was able to help bring them to fruition. And I think it takes some pressure off everyone to have a collaborator.” With no intentions of dropping her solo work, Hatfield finds refreshing contrast in her new collaboration with Love. “Her drumming alone affects the way I approach the situation — it makes me play differently, it makes me feel buoyant. In her writing there’s more mystery, more left up to the imagination. It’s changed the final outcome of the songs for me. “After the first writing endeavor it felt natural to work as a group and it felt that way when Heidi came around, too. Not easy, but not a struggle to make the sound come together. We do put a lot of effort into it, especially since we don’t all live in the same town.” Hard work aside, Love sums up the element of surprise that resonates in Some Girls’ music, “I never ever had any kind of preconceived notion of Juliana and I starting a whole new band together. The surprise element is part of the inspiration of this band. We really like this but we don’t necessarily want to go back to what we used to do together. It’s a new thing and we have to prove ourselves as a new band.”