Juliana Hatfield
Become What You Are (1993)

review by: Alexander Washburn
Date: 11/3/00

"I've already gave it all that I've got." You can picture her face wincing and you can hear the stress and anguish in her voice.

Become What You Are is the story of a young woman who has no idols and whose first all-age show were the Violet Femmes and the Del Fuegos, "before they had a record out." It's about someone who wants to be "entertained," who "wants to feel alive again."

She turns it up for "Mabel, and "A Dame with a Rod," in a guitar driven fashion that would make Bob Mould proud. She gives us biographical sketches about hating her sister and tells us her dreams about getting out of her "sleepy," Massachusetts hometown.

She has been called the Queen of Teen Angst. But Juliana Hatfield is way too clever to be linked to a teen-anything. She's "a liar and that's the truth."