There was a time when Juliana Hatfield played coy, but the toxic muse behind Pussycat’s bittersweet melodies and crunchy guitar solos is recognizable as the man who’s made so many of us feel as dejected as a woman in a Hatfield song: #NotMyPresident. The organ-kissed “Heartless” fires a volley of rhetorical questions designed to tax the faux-populist’s cerebral cortex, but Hatfield spends more time hitting Donald Trump where it really hurts: his raging id and fragile ego. “When You’re A Star” turns his hot-mic boast about assaulting women into a sick burn; “Short-Fingered Man” should fuel an early morning Twitter rant to give Hatfield some well-deserved exposure. It’s worth noting that she saves some of her sharpest attacks for some of Trump’s female enablers. White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway gets a perfect tribute with a song that’s pretty only on the outside, and “Rhinoceros” spares no sympathy for the complicit first lady who’s content to stay out of the way while America gets fucked by her husband.
—M.J. Fine
