If Juliana Hatfield buried a knife inside her sleeping lover's heart, she
would undoubtedly do it with an innocent smile. Even though the lyrics on
this, her fourth solo album (which largely amounts to a series of "fuck
you" messages to lovers and friends past and present), makes this her
angriest and darkest album, she maintains her deadpan, sweet-little-girl
throughout. The album is less introspectively contemplative and more
spontaneously pissed off, which might be due less to her psychological
state than the fact that she wrote and recorded this album in just a few
recent weeks. And since she decided not to use any effects or digital
processing, Bed sounds pretty much like a demo from an angry young girl,
with guitars that are clumsy, distorted, and loud. "Down On Me" is a
straight-up punk tune, "You Are The Camera" starts off like a track off
Never Mind The Bullocks, while "Backseat" and the seriously depressed
"Running Out" introduce some soft jangle. But the treatment is consistent
throughout: keep it raw, swallow it whole, and hope you don't get E.
Coli.Is the no-frills, back-to-basics approach an aesthetic choice, a
ploy to reinvent herself, or just sheer laziness? Who gives a flying one?
Bed is her spunkiest album yet.
