Juliana Hatfield
Lightning Might Strike
American Laundromat
Lightning Might Strike is Juliana Hatfield’s 21st album. It is art serving multiple purposes: granting her catharsis through its creation and providing her audience with an exploration of life’s pain, culminating in a sense of hope for the future.
Listening to Lightning Might Strike takes me back 30 years to when I discovered Juliana Hatfield’s debut, Become What You Are, on a record store listening rack. Now as then, the acoustic guitar stands in the front and gently grabs your attention, ushering you into a room full of feeling and motion, but landing deliberately, not frantically. The themes are heavy — real-life heavy — and the music is melodic, harmonic, and constantly progressing. The album is a quiet party where you feel like you know everybody in the room, even though you haven’t actually met. They wear comfortable sweaters and casual shoes, while engaging in genuine conversation.
The album opens with the third single, “Fall Apart.” The lyrics remind us that life’s cyclical nature is inescapable, and that we all build a skillset to manage our failures and disappointments. The music is lilting, like a gentle tide carrying away the debris of a recent shipwreck, the shipwreck itself becoming less and less of an object, and more of a memory.
The song, “Scratchers,” is despair wrapped in hope, if hope were a cardigan with too many holes, trying to shield against multi-generational ambitions left out in the cold for 40 years. “Constant Companion” is grief seen in glimpses and shadows from across the room. “Popsicle” feels like nostalgia for the familiar sweetness of youth melting away onto messy hands, leaving a naked stick and the aftertaste of goals unmet. This is not to say the album is depressing; in fact the overall vibe is one of quiet confidence. Instead of dwelling on the hurt, the songs visit pain with reverence, and then they push forward towards something beautiful. Towards life.
The album ends with the most uplifting song in the bunch, “All I’ve Got.” This is the banger on the album. It never fails to perk up my ears when it comes on, and it is full of joy and hope. The chorus shifts into a minor key and provides juxtaposition for the verses that are bright and happy. The thing she’s got is her music, and that is the hope and the light that we all look to find within ourselves. Lightning Might Strike is Juliana Hatfield’s gift to those of us looking for an outstretched hand in a moment of darkness.
“WHEN THE PAIN DOESN’T STOP, YOU HELP ME MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL.”
