Blake Babies
Earwig

Here is another of those bands that did not invent anything at all, but they had plenty to say.

When rock was also content, expression, communication (and not just a mechanical reproduction of established musical forms), many young people used it as a means to convey their concerns, as an outlet, as a blog to pour out and share their discomfort. In Boston, then, towards the end of the 80s, a true movement was born, when from the colleges emerged a series of fundamental bands devoted to sentimentally tinged rock: Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr, Pixies (often heartfelt, despite their apparent extroversion), Blake Babies.

In the first LP of the latter, "Earwig" (1989), the young Juliana Hatfield confides with an open heart, like a teen Joni Mitchell, in straightforward folk-rock songs that are actually watercolors, atmospheres, moods. Turned to the blue, muffled, humble, liquid, impalpable, discreet, introverted: this is the instrumental accompaniment of John Strohm, Freda Love, and Evan Dando (another extraordinary interpreter of lyricism in music). The most intimate folk-rock of the 80s, where the proverbial jingle-jangle drowns in the languor of arpeggios that seem to have a therapeutic function.

"Cesspool", at the opening, uses the vocabulary of REM, but with more emotional charge. Among instruments sometimes left to themselves, floating in the void, pauses of reflection, head-down reconsiderations and gazes once again turned towards the sky, Juliana displays her clean, crystalline, fragile timbre, yet capable of bearing the weight of life. The masterpiece of the album might be "You Don't Give Up", a bitter, melancholy confession, like an afternoon spent staring out the bedroom window, among a thousand thoughts crowding the mind; the instruments (voice included) circle around, glance sideways, get enchanted, grow gloomy, and return to the starting point. We are in the realm of the most inspired Joni Mitchell, with the difference that in Blake Babies there is always a glimpse for redemption: this is where you sense the difference between a band of twentysomethings and an adult singer-songwriter.

The downcast tone of songs like this one steps aside when Juliana regains courage and finds the grit of a Hope Nicholls in the power-country "Your Way Or The Highway" or when, in "Rain", her tears dry on her face, allowing her to finally smile again, or in "Lament", where she tries to leave sadness behind and finds serenity, at least temporarily. Hardcore is distant (except for "Not Just A Wish", a funny and awkward final outburst), but the need to affront the world with its perverse rules remains; Hatfield's discouragement is not baseless and the preferred target is the male universe: the terse ultimatum "Take Your Head Off My Shoulder" oozes with retribution against the ambiguity and hypocrisy of supposed friends.

Naturally, behind Juliana there is a deep knowledge of rock history. If "Dead And Gone" seems a homage to Big Star, in the unlikely cover of "Loose" the shy and introverted girl tries out a voluptuous rock star persona, with paradoxical results: Juliana Hatfield, never so clumsy, never so tender, never so out of place, managed to strip the Stooges of any erotic charge!
The last part of the album is the most calm, almost reconciled. In "Don't Suck My Breath", a tale of ordinary frustration, in the calmness of "Outta My Head", in the resignation of "Steamy Gregg", where Juliana dreams with a mind free from traumas, completes the portrait of a girl like many others, seeking shelter from the existential storm.