Juliana Hatfield - Pussycat

Pitchfork 68

It was supposed to be the moment Donald Trump lost the election. Republicans bolted by the dozens, rescinding their endorsements and calling for him to drop out. Paul Ryan uninvited him to a rally. His own party chairman denounced him, and even Mike Pence, perhaps the most unwavering of all of Trump apologists, seemed to tease the possibility of turning on his running mate. And then somehow, with remarkable speed, the news cycle moved on. Within just a few weeks, the press seemed to completely forget about that unprecedented video of a presidential candidate admitting to—graphically bragging about—serial sexual assault.

That voters were able to look past Trump’s “Access Hollywood” confessions remains astounding to Juliana Hatfield, who wrote of how deeply she was shaken by them in an essay for Talkhouse. “Since the Trump ‘pussy grab’ tapes were released, I’ve found myself wanting to reach for my emergency supply of valium,” the veteran alt-rocker wrote, describing what she dubbed “the Trump effect”: “The sight of his face and/or the sound of his voice tightens the stomach, the heart, the sphincter. Everything’s clenched. Even—maybe especially—the ‘pussy.’”

Trump’s comments hang heavy over Hatfield’s latest record, Pussycat, an album packed with scathing vignettes about predatory men, particularly the one currently leading the free world. “I Wanna Be Your Disease” opens the record with fantasies of smiting the President, bringing him to his knees and making him pay for all his “vile and hateful words.” Heated as that track is, it’s tame compared to some of what follows.

Few records this year have cried out quite so loudly for a trigger warning. On the queasy “When You’re a Star,” Hatfield connects Trump’s words to Bill Cosby’s sexual assaults. “She won’t remember a thing, and even if she did the law is on your side,” she sings, “They never prosecute your kind.” The sex in “Rhinoceros” is more consensual but no less graphic. Over a whimsically nasty riff, Hatfield imagines the horror of what intercourse with her husband might be like for Melania Trump. She spares no grotesque detail: the stench of rotting meat, the slobbering of his thick tongue, the hopelessness of feeling crushed under his mass (she likens it to being water boarded).

Pussycat isn’t above some cheap shots—“Short-Fingered Man” pries at one of the President’s most legendary insecurities—but Hatfield’s lyrics nail the gut-level revulsion the President provokes in many women, especially those who’ve been victimized by powerful men. Apparently she wrote and recorded the album in a flurry of inspiration right after the election, playing everything but the drums herself, and that impulsivity often shows. Like much of the country last November, she was still working through her shock, straightening out her thoughts, and giving herself the freedom to follow them when they turned ugly.

And yet, as loaded as the subject matter is, it does amazingly little to diminish Hatfield’s bright spirit. Even on this, her angriest record by a landslide, the singer retains the intrinsic tunefulness that’s marked every record she’s made since she was a teenager. Three decades after her debut with Blake Babies, her voice remains perpetually youthful, and her guitars continue to default to an agreeable jangle whenever she doesn’t make a concerted effort to toughen them up a bit. It’s difficult to imagine anybody else coming across quite so good-natured when singing about lighting Kellyanne Conway on fire and watching her face melt off.

Ironically, Pussycat is the kind of bluntly political record Hatfield used to be knocked for shying away from. At the height of her 1990s stardom, Hatfield was dismissed in the more activist corners of the music world as a lightweight (never mind that her songs frequently explored the ways society needles and dismisses women). She’s spent her career in an often thankless middle ground, too feminine for the masculine music press, yet not punk enough for the riot grrls. But Pussycat lends to the case for a critical reappraisal. Now would be an ideal time for one, given how the DNA of Hatfield’s hooky, plainspoken alterna-pop has carried through some of indie-rock’s sharpest young songwriters, from Waxahatchee to Bully to Laura Stevenson and Charly Bliss—artists that have demonstrated there’s plenty of substance in this sound. What a treat it would be if, 30 years into their careers, they were all making records as relevant, passionate, and strangely personable as this one.