By the time Juliana Hatfield had reached her mid-20s, she’d become the poster girl for ’90s indie rock. She was looked upon as the thinking person’s alternative to the riot-grrrl phenomenon, and the future seemed rosy. Hatfield had formed revered combo the Blake Babies, launched a red-hot solo career, played bass on the breakthrough Lemonheads album and gained national attention when she told Interview magazine she was still a virgin and wasn’t too worried about it. The backlash from those without much of an attention span was inevitable. In the ensuing years, Hatfield has honed her art and produced a wealth of stirring, self-confident albums. Peace & Love, out next week on her Ye Olde label, is an utterly sincere revelation that proves well worth the wait. Hatfield will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our exclusive excerpt from her 2008 memoir and our brand new Q&A with her.
Hatfield: The Hurt Locker is a movie about a guy who defuses bombs for the U.S. army in Iraq during the war, in 2004. It doesn’t seem to have a particular political point of view; it simply presents a very small cross section of army guys doing their jobs during wartime in Iraq. As I watched these people doing their very intensive, complicated and dangerous work—and saw the resentful civilians trying to live their lives around them in a war zone—I kept thinking, “What the fuck are we doing in Iraq? What were we ever doing in Iraq? All that work and expense and pain and injury and death seems so pointless.” But then I came to the end of the movie and saw that this is all that William James—the main character—can do. (“War is a drug.”) Which supports my long-held theory that there will never be peace in this world because some people just love fighting too much. Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhQdJTlo5NI
