Indie rocker Juliana Hatfield has announced her forthcoming album, Blood, set to be released May 14 via American Laundromat Records. To tease the album, Hatfield released “Mouthful of Blood” from the record today. The upcoming release will be Hatfield’s 19^th studio album, an impressive number for any artist.

The Boston-based artist first came onto the alt-rock scene with her first band, Blake Babies, in 1986 while still in college, before joining The Lemonheads on bass. Hatfield then refocused on her solo work, releasing her first studio album Hey Babe in 1992.

“Mouthful of Blood” is the eighth song Hatfield’s forthcoming album. The single is groovy and melodic, yet somehow manages to be punchy, shown by the repetition of the line “I bite my tongue, my mouth full of blood” throughout the chorus. This same grittiness and bite that presents itself in an upbeat, catchy melody is a motif throughout Blood, according to Hatfield. On this theme, she says, “I always love coming up with melodies and then trying to fit words into them … I always find places to use the Mellotron flutes and strings, on every album, because those sounds are so beautiful to me. They are a nice counterpoint to the damaged lyrical content.”

Listen to “Mouthful of Blood” off Blood here:

Unlike previous albums, Hatfield took the opportunity presented by the pandemic to record Blood from her own Massachusetts home. She says, “Usually I work in a studio. I did more than half the work in my room—with Jed [Davis, a recent collaborator of Hatfield’s] helping me to troubleshoot the technology, and helping with building and arranging some of the songs.”

In recent years, along with her original solo work, Hatfield has also kept busy recording cover albums including Juliana Hatfield sings Olivia Newton John in 2018 and Juliana Hatfield sings The Police in 2019. Aside from work on her new album, Hatfield is also live streaming monthly performances of one of her albums.

Fans will look forward to the indie rocker’s upcoming album, on which Hatfield explains, “I think these songs are a reaction to how seriously and negatively a lot of people have been affected by the past four years. But it’s fun, musically. There’s a lot of playing around. I didn’t really have a plan when I started this project.” 

Blood track list:

1. “The Shame Of Love”
2. “Gorgon”
3. “Nightmary”
4. “Had A Dream”
5. “Splinter”
6. “Suck It Up”
7. “Chunks”
8. “Mouthful Of Blood”
9. “Dead Weight”
10. “Torture”