The song can be seen as a testament to endurance (“I’ve always had a feeling/that I was born to win”) and the album itself, recorded mostly in Juliana’s house, by Juliana, was two years in the making.

This riff switches, in ‘Scratchers’, from major to minor and back again, creating a pendulating mood shift, alternately optimistic and gloomy-doomy, befitting the song’s split between the rose-tinted glasses of the gambler (you can’t win if you don’t play!) and the harsh reality of the subtext (you can’t win, you’ll never win).

The album, Lightning Might Strike, captures a period of major change. “It was a difficult time for me when I started working on this album. I had just uprooted myself from the city apartment building where I’d been living for twenty years to a house in a more rural town two hours away where I knew no one when one of my best friends died (‘Ashes’), and then my dog died (‘Constant Companion’), then my mother was diagnosed with esophagus cancer (‘Scratchers’). I was pretty depressed for a solid year (‘Long Slow Nervous Breakdown’) and was lost and very lonely (‘Harmonizing With Myself’). I was thinking about fate and circumstance and about how I’d ended up where I was (‘Where Are You Now’).”

Joining Juliana (guitar, keyboards, vocals, percussion, bass) on this album journey were Chris Anzalone (drums), Ed Valauskas (bass) and Pat DiCenso (mix/mastering).

Lightning Might Strike:

1. Fall Apart
2. Long Slow Nervous Breakdown
3. Popsicle
4. My House Is Not My Dream House
5. Harmonizing With Myself
6. Scratchers
7. Constant Companion
8. Where Are You Now
9. Strong Too Long
10. Wouldn’t Change Anything
11. Ashes
12. All I’ve Got

The post Juliana Hatfield tests her luck on ‘Scratchers’ – the first single from forthcoming new album Lightning Might Strike appeared first on She Makes Music.