Pitchfork

If you're thinking it's been a while since Juliana Hatfield released an album, you'd be right. Following 2000's double album release Use Your Illusion I and... Oh, wait. That's not right. How about Beautiful Creature and Total System Failure? There we go. Anyway, since then, she's released only a very peculiar retrospective, 2002's Gold Stars. Besides containing a full seven new songs and a nearly random selection of the rest of her catalog, the collection served mostly to remind the world that much like Brian Wilson, her unreleased album (God's Foot, recorded after Only Everything, and deemed not commercial enough by Atlantic, to whom she was under contract at the time-- is where her best work lies. Damn you, callous record companies!!! When will you learn?

However, 2004 is all set for the return of the prodigal daughter, with the upcoming release of her fourth album on Zoe/Rounder Records, In Exile Deo. Set for release on May 18th, you'd have to think it's likely that there aren't going to be any major stylistic changes this far into Hatfield's career-- I doubt she has an Achtung Baby in her-- but according to Zoe's press release for In Exile Deo, there is some hopeful/worrying/odd news about the album. In true Liz Phair style, she'd paired up with some heavy-hitting commercial producers and engineers this time around. David Leonard (Prince, Shawn Colvin... wait a second! Avril Lavigne? Crap.) co-produced and mixed two tracks on the album, David Way (Madonna, Foo Fighters, Pink) mixed five songs, and Dave Cook (Nick Cave, Graham Parker) mixed everything else. As is her usual custom, the rest of In Exile Deo was produced mainly by Hatfield herself.

A full tour will be announced soon, and in the meantime, Hatfield will be joining the rest of the free world at South By Southwest, on Thursday, March 18th. She will be debuting material from In Exile Deo, and maybe, just maybe, playing "Freebird." Just make sure your request is loud, people never get tired of that. We don't have a finalized tracklist yet, but some songs on the album include:

Jamie's in Town
Sunshine
Get in Line
Tourist
Some Rainy Sunday
Forever
Tomorrow Never Comes
Dirty Dog

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