Everything's Changing

...and everything's falling apart at work. We are given tasks, which cannot be included in our monthly accomplishment reports, tasks that take up 80% of our time. On paper, it would seem like we're doing so little, when the fact is, we are throwing in a few extra hours everyday just to finish our prescribed assignments.

This makes me sad. Multi-tasking has been abused severely. If multi-tasking were a dog, it would be a very dead dog. By spreading ourselves too thinly, we become experts of nothing, and it is something that matters a lot to most of us.

Some girls are subtle

When Heidi Gluck, Freda Love and Juliana Hatfield formed Some Girls last year, I got deliriously excited because a.) it's two-thirds of the Blake Babies in one band; b.) I like the relaxed, almost bare recording of Gluck's band, The Pieces; and c.) I'm just a huge Juliana Hatfield fan. "Hey Baby" was the perfect soundtrack to our freshmen year in U.P. --- a little insecure, a little lost, a little sexy. Her other releases in the years that followed never echoed the brutal vulnerability and unabashedly pop spirit of her Mammoth Records days (suddenly missing Dillon Fence). Her latest release, "In Exile Deo," happily finds Juliana, err, happy. It's a return-to-form release, comfortingly familiar and happily jangling along the crooked road to love that curves like a knowing smile.

Some Girls is somewhere between the early Juliana, who handles most of the songwriting, and the laid-back, matter-of-fact rock of the Blake Babies. Juliana's guitar lines are subtle, a continuous riff that wraps the songs neatly like a jagged little bow. Actually, everything's a little too subtle. There's no total rock-out moment; their songs are 3-minute pop sweetness fun with a hint of the sour. Just a hint. And it's refreshing that way. "Feel It" is in no way a significant album, and the three girls seem content with their relaxed, tipsy party. And cheers to that.