There's Always Another Girl

Album Review

Bankrolled via the crowd-sourced funding site Pledgemusic, There’s Always Another Girl shifts away from the sparely introspective Peace & Love without returning to the lusher textures of How to Walk Away. Appropriately enough for a record financed by fans, There’s Always Another Girl hearkens back in its sound and spirit to Juliana’s earliest indie recordings — both solo and with the Blake Babies — with Hatfield finding plenty of colors in nothing more than layers of guitars and voices accentuated by the occasional keyboard; yet this isn’t a retreat to the past, it’s a continuation of the excellent, mature work she’s done in the new millennium. This shares a strain of weathered weariness with Peace & Love, particularly on the closing stretch, but it’s a richer record sonically and emotionally, possessing a variety of textures and feeling within Hatfield’s recognizable signature. Perhaps Pledgemusic gives There’s Always Another Girl an identifiable angle to the world at large — it did generate a story in Salon around the week of its release — and that runs the risk of suggesting the album is only for a devotees, or that Hatfield is somewhat past her prime, when neither is true: she’s been in something of a career renaissance ever since the mid-2000s, creating sharp adult pop that’s accessible without being commercial, so if fan funding is what’s needed to keep her actively recording, this album is a great testament to its potential power.