How to Walk Away

iTunes Review

It’s a difficult transition to age gracefully as a pop musician. The music relies on an ephemeral kick that pushes youth and vitality. The aging songwriter and performer becomes weathered and experienced, often cynical and jaded, or at least quieter and increasingly introspective. By 2008, former Blake Babies and solo performer Juliana Hatfield hit introspection dead-on with an autobiography, When I Grow Up, and a new album, How to Walk Away, that deals in varying degrees with her life after another disappointing break-up. Even visits from the Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler for “This Lonely Love” or Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws for “Such A Beautiful Girl” can’t shake the melancholy. Instead, Hatfield pushes forth half-speed ahead, traipsing over the bittersweet terrain of newfound freedom with warmly distorted electric guitars and sorrowful melodies (“My Baby…,” “Remember November”). “Just Lust” and “Now I’m Gone” add a tougher Stones-styled rhythm guitar to the harmonic wall of Hatfield’s sweet vocal mass, while “So Alone” rattles with a loose percussive echo that symbolizes Hatfield’s world swirling out of control as she tries to establish a grip. It’s power pop with many emotional layers.