Juliana Hatfield
Fresh from teasing the release of new album Love Chant last month, The Lemonheads have previewed the upcoming LP with latest single “Deep End.”
Co-written by Evan Dando alongside longtime collaborator Tom Morgan (of Australian outfit Smudge), “Deep End” features Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals with additional guitar from Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis. Both Hatfield and Mascis make brief cameos in the accompanying video, which was filmed in by São Paulo, Brazil by Surreal Hotel Arts.
The black-and-white clip sees Dando walking down an endless sidewalk as he’s passed by a series of objects, people, and landscapes, with his bandmates occasionally joining. “It’s never been so painless making a video,” Dando said of the clip. “Everyone working was really great. The endless sidewalk goes really well with the song.”
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“Deep End” is also backed by a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Sad Cinderella,” which features backing vocals from Nashville artist Erin Rae. Both tracks will appear on a limited edition 12″ vinyl single that arrives on June 13 via Fire Records.
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The A-side is set to appear on Love Chant, which will arrive as the band’s first album of new material since 2006. The record will reportedly release in fall, though specific details are expected to arrive in the coming months.
The Lemonheads first formed in Boston in 1986, with a series of independent albums arriving via Taang! before the group signed to Atlantic for 1990’s Lovey.
Working with Morgan while in Australia, The Lemonheads found their commercial breakthrough with 1992’s It’s a Shame About Ray, which reached No. 68 on the Billboard 200. Its success was bolstered by a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” and helped the group achieve their commercial peak with 1993’s Come on Feel the Lemonheads, which peaked at No. 56.
The Lemonheads initially dissolved in 1997, though Dando reactivated the group in 2005, with a self-titled record arriving the following year. Since then, two cover albums have been released, with Varshons and Varshons 2 being issued in 2009 and 2019, respectively.
Juliana Hatfield made a name for herself in the era of ‘90s college rock with hooky, pop-laden rock songs that comfortably fell outside of the mainstream. Now, Hatfield is about to release an album of covers of one of the most celebrated mainstream pop bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Electric Light Orchestra.
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For Hatfield, ELO’s orchestral, multi-layered sound — a signature of its primary member, Jeff Lynn — has been an attraction since before she became a musician. “Growing up, ELO songs would come on the radio, and I was always mesmerized by the sound,” Hatfield tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “ELO just lit up the radio.”
Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, out Nov. 17, is her seventh album for American Laundromat Records and the third of cover songs following tributes to Olivia Netwon-John in 2018 and The Police in 2019. “It’s like an escape back to a more innocent time,” Hatfield says of recording the cover songs. “I was full of hope back then. And the mystery and the magic of music was first enveloping me and I was just very excited about it. So when I’m playing these songs and singing the songs of The Police or ELO or Olivia Newton-John, I think part of it is I’m trying to recapture some kind of magical, innocent love of music. And it works. I’m getting those feelings back.”
Ahead of the album’s release, American Laundromat Records has released three tracks that are among ELO’s most popular and successful songs: “Telephone Line,” “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” and “Don’t Bring Me Down,” which reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979. The 10-track ELO album delves deep into the band’s repertoire and includes such songs as “Bluebird is Dead” from 1973’s On the Third Day and “Sweet Is The Night,” a deep cut from the 1977 album Out of the Blue that peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Two additional songs, “I’m Alive” and “When I Was a Boy,” released as a separate 7” vinyl single.
“When I was choosing songs for the album, I definitely wanted to focus on some of the really well-known, catchy ones like ‘Telephone Line’ and ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ just because they’re such great constructions and they’re so fun and well made. But then I wanted to highlight some of the more obscure stuff that maybe people hadn’t heard of like the later albums, like the Zoom album [from 2001] has the great song, ‘Ordinary Dream’ on it.”
Hatfield will begin a string of headlining shows beginning at City Winery in Pittsburgh on Oct. 4 and ending at POP in Providence, R.I., on Oct. 14. Performing the songs live requires Hatfield to translate ELO’s Phil Spector-like “wall of sound” production to a more modest setting. In concert, Lynn’s ELO has a full band — including strings and backing vocals — to bring the familiar recordings to life. Hatfield has less to work with. “It’s difficult to play,” she says. “It’s difficult to get my head around. How do you play an ELO song live when there’s so many layers on the recording? My recordings of ELO songs are slightly stripped down compared to ELO. I don’t have an orchestra or even the string quartet.”
She figured out some workarounds, though, such as substituting keyboards for strings and singing some of the string parts. Hatfield got a helping hand at some recent shows from some backup singers, including Kay Hanley, the singer for the band Letters to Cleo. “You need some extra vocals for sure,” Hatfield says.
Listen to the entire interview with Juliana Hatfield at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Audible, Scribd.
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