Great news to pass along for fans of Juliana Hatfield … the prolific singer-songwriter has announced that she will be releasing a new album in February which she has titled Peace and Love. Now, I’ve been a huge fan of Juliana‘s for many, many years so this is very exciting news for me … I’m sure it is exciting news for some of y’all as well. Here is the full text of her new album press release announcement:

Peace And Love, Juliana Hatfield’s latest album, will be released on February 16, 2010 on Ye Olde Records. Hatfield, of course, has a long history of DIY endeavors – from her trailblazing days with Boston indie band the Blake Babies to her recent releases on Ye Olde Records, the label she founded in 2005 – but with Peace And Love she reaches a new level of independence. She produced and engineered the album herself and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, piano, harmonica and drum machine. “I’ve produced records before but I was always in a studio with professional engineers. So it was definitely a learning process for me,” says Hatfield, who was ready to strip things down after her critically acclaimed 2008 album, How To Walk Away, which was a full studio production. “I always like to try things I’ve never done before and I’d been yearning to record myself.” Hatfield had just purchased her brother’s eight-track digital recorder and moved into a Cambridge apartment with a back room that had excellent natural acoustics, so the time was right. “I was able to follow every instinct without worrying that anyone was going to think it was a kooky idea,” she recalls. “I just wanted to do something simple.” The result is an incredibly intimate collection of songs, expertly capturing the loneliness and collateral damage borne of broken relationships yet adamantly refusing to remain broken. In the liner notes, Boston Phoenix music editor James Parker gives it a name: “Survivor-music – because even at their most palpitatingly fragile, your songs have always been built to last. Well-made, strong-boned, fit to be played on streetcorners and station platforms.” Just as Hatfield stripped down the recording process, the characters that populate Peace And Love are ready to shed their convoluted lives. The lilting “Why Can’t We Love Each Other” answers its own question by acknowledging that love is a choice: “we can make our lives a song/will it be a blues or a hymn/a dirge or a psalm/it could be so simple.” But there’s the rub, of course: it could be so simple…if it weren’t for our propensity to muck things up. From the plucked Elizabethan chords that introduce the opening “Peace And Love” and the feedback-drenched “What Is Wrong” to “Unsung,” Hatfield’s first-ever instrumental, and the closing “Dear Anonymous,” written from the point of view of a victim who finds empathy for her stalker, the collection is both compelling and surprising. “Faith In Our Friends” celebrates those who “think you’re just right the way you are” while Hatfield gains fresh perspective on her complex relationship with longtime friend Evan Dando on the exquisite, ethereal “Evan.” Peace And Love is Hatfield’s 11th solo album and follows last year’s How To Walk Away, which was hailed as “rueful and gorgeous,” by Entertainment Weekly, which gave the album an A-. “After 20 years, the songstress still packs a wallop on her 10th album, featuring edgy tales of heartbreak sung with that classic sweetness,” said Newsweek, naming it a “Checklist” pick of the week upon its release while Spin pronounced it “vital,” awarding it three out of four stars. Her autobiography, entitled When I Grow Up, was published by Wiley & Sons in September 2008.

I just love Juliana Hatfield … the woman writes and records so much music that she offers up the songs that don’t make it on her albums on her official website for downloaders to pay whatever they feel is fair. In the past couple of years she has made at least 4 albums worth of material available to fans in this way. I cannot wait to hear what this new batch of songs sounds like. After the jump, check out the tracklist for Peace and Love …

01. Peace and Love
02. The End Of The War
03. Why Can’t We Love Each Other
04. Butterflies
05. What Is Wrong
06. Unsung
07. Evan
08. Let’s Go Home
09. I Picked You Up
10. Faith In Our Friends
11. I’m Disappearing
12. Dear Anonymous

12 more songs … I can’t wait!! Are there any Juliana fans out there? Hollaback, yo!

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