Juliana Hatfield - 'In Exile Deo'

By Matt Parks

‘In Exile Deo’ is the perfect record to follow a career retrospective (2002’s ‘Gold Stars 1992-2002)—a brilliant display of the mastery of song craft perfected during the course of a successful solo career that now spans more than a decade.The album integrates the two distinct styles of Hatfield’s previous two solo albums (released simultaneously in 2000)—blending the fragile, meticulously-crafted pop of ‘Beautiful Creature’ with the looser, heavier rock sound of ‘Total System Failure.’

The thirteen tracks on ‘In Exile Deo’ deftly narrate stories of dysfunction, choice, and personal growth, embracing the whole heft of the artist’s talents as singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, ranging freely from the gritty “Get in Line” to the warm-hearted resignation of “My Enemy.” Juliana Hatfield’s voice is the most graceful in rock, and she’s one of only a handful of legitimate female rock artists able to maintain a credible, uncompromised career as a solo artist for better than a decade, and one of only a few unafraid of her own eccentricities (listen to her breathtaking cover of Dot Allison’s heartbreaker “Tomorrow Never Comes” for proof of this). Gorgeous, mature, ambitious, and almost impossibly rich, ‘In Exile Deo’ is Hatfield’s finest album yet.

Playlist: “Get in Line,” “Tourist,” “Dirty Dog,” “Tomorrow Never Comes,” “My Enemy”