New album finds Hatfield blue

Listening to Juliana Hatfield's new album, "How to Walk Away," is like reading the diary of that girlfriend you cruelly dumped, full of melancholy and a little bit of acid.

Hatfield's 10th solo album marks her 20th year as a recording artist and coincides with the release of her autobiography, "When I Grow Up." It's as if we've watched her grow up in that time. She came onto the scene in the 1980s with Boston's Blake Babies, a teen looking frail and sweet but tough as nails. She morphed into Evan Dando's "Drug Buddy" in the 1990s, an edgy 20-something with the voice of an angry fairy.

Two decades later, she's more mature and self-assured, but more vulnerable on "How to Walk Away," her first release since 2005's "Made in China."

In many ways, this confessional album parallels the emotions you feel after being dumped, alternating from depression to caustic bitterness. Producer Andy Chase brings a lushness to "How to Walk Away," with occasional piano and strings that deepen the emotional impact.

The best songs here are the ones in which Hatfield's a little bit angry, like "Just Lust," and it's chorus that comes like a slap in the face: "It's just lust/It doesn't mean I love you." Or the slamming door of "Now I'm Gone."

Depression, a problem Hatfield struggled with even at her most successful, seeps into almost every song and it can be a bummer. And though generally beautiful, it's a hard album to listen to at times. But like Beck's "Sea Change" or Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue," it's worth wading into, especially if you're heart's been broken recently.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: Hatfield is at her most upbeat musically and heartbreaking lyrically on "So Alone," a song most folks who've battled depression will find distressingly easy to identify with. She sings: "It's late at night and you need somebody to talk to/But who are those people that you once knew?/And if you called just what would you say/Would you break down right away?/You're so alone, you're so alone, you wanna die and nobody knows."