When the Juliana Hatfield Three performed live for the first time in 20 years at last month’s Hot Stove Cool Music benefit in Boston, three-quarters of their four-song set were familiar tunes. But aside from the three selections from the trio’s one-and-done 1993 album Become What You Are (“Supermodel,” “My Sister,” and album closer “I Got No Idols”) was new single “If I Could,” reminding the Paradise Rock Club crowd that this reunion wasn’t entirely a nostalgia act.
And now that the band’s new record Whatever, My Love is inching closer to its February 17 release date — followed by a February 27 headlining performance at the Sinclair in Cambridge — more new songs are starting to emerge.
The upcoming album’s penultimate track, “Wood,” has surfaced today via Rolling Stone. Hatfield calls the track “the opposite of ‘I Wanna Sex You Up'” and says it’s about feeling numb when others want you.
“There are mood swings in both mind and body,” Hatfield tells Rolling Stone. “Like I’ve said before in songs like ‘I Got No Idols,’ sometimes ‘I don’t like to be touched.’ How do you handle it when you feel dead and numb? When your significant other wants affection and you don’t? It’s complicated and mysterious, biological and psychological and emotional.”
Let that be a warning to us all.