Some Girls

On the title track of Feel It, Juliana Hatfield sings, "Back and forth I go in and out/between yes and no and confidence and doubt," which basically sums up her career. The Berkeley-trained Hatfield was indie It girl circa 1994 and has never quite recovered; themes of shallow fame, getting screwed by record companies and a general sense of jadedness have permeated her music ever since. But this isn't a Juliana Hatfield record, exactly, it's Some Girls (Hatfield, her Blake Babies cohort, drummer Freda Love — the percussion here is outstanding — and Vancouver's Heidi Gluck), and the difference is marked. The first three songs are so damn good, so damn catchy, that you might think the Girls have been hanging with the Salteens. "Necessito," a slow-moving ode to rockin' out, contains the bound-to-be immortal battle cry "Turn it on, turn it up, necessito la la la." A line like "The doctor tells me that's a warning/there was something in my drink" is laid out over a series of staccato hand claps, of all things. Gluck even busts out a harmonica solo! A cover of Robert Johnson's "Malted Milk" is annoying, not soulful — and an unfortunate way to end an album of originals — but the chin-nodding, air-drumming sing-alongs Feel It inspires are worth one misstep.