Blake Babies Sunburn Hollywood, 1990 amazon

Until a few weeks ago, i had no idea who the Blake Babies were, and only recognized Juliana Hatfield for "My Sister", a song i remember eliciting an uncharacteristically vehement distaste in my dad when it was played on Live 105. Through the miracle of Allmusic, my musical odyssey somehow circled back into the college rock scene of the early 90's (shoegazers the Nightblooms linked to Black Tambourine, who were predecessors of favorites Velocity Girl, who are lumped in with the Lemonheads, who are finally described as similar to Blake Babies. Whew!). Again placing complete faith in the powers of Allmusic, i checked out the 1990 album Sunburn, released a year before the band's breakup and Hatfield's rocket to alterna-stardom. The truly great thing about AM is that feeling you get when you make a discovery. It doesn't happen all the time (or even often), but when it does you feel like you've just dug up buried treasure. Blake Babies are just that. This is an album with firm allegiances to early 90's alternative, but one you can wholeheartedly enjoy outside of the shadow of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The hooks on "I'm Not Your Mother" and "Out There" are fantastic, with just a touch of reverb and distortion adding resonance to Hatfield's light, girlish vocals. As AM put it, Sunburn is "in many ways the last great college rock album". Maybe, maybe.

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