Juliana Hatfield

You know when a current boy or girlfriend uses, say, a soap your ex used, and it smells eerily the same, bathing you in all these memories, but at the same time it's totally, disconcertingly different? Juliana Hatfield's latest has a strong whiff of the '90s about it: the sweet-and-sour mix of chunky guitars and girlish vocals; the confessional, ever-so-pouty quirkiness. And yet it's as if all those qualities that made her an alt-darling back in the day have been lifted up and molded into a new context, one where more adult concerns (and slightly huskier, more mature voice) consume Hatfield.