Take a look and see/How alone it feels," Juliana Hatfield sings on Become What You Are. She might be lonely, but she has turned her gaze outward and engaged the world, leaving behind the solipsism that characterized Hey Babe. If not exactly optimistic about what she has found, she has come back with a fine album, a remarkable set of songs that subtly calibrates the dynamics of relationships today.

Those songs cover a lot of ground, from models, families and rape-revenge fantasies to – surprise! – low self-esteem and unrequited love. Yet the album has a consistency of tone, with most of the songs united by a sense of missed connections and dislocations. "I could call but/You could hang up," she sings in "Little Pieces"; the emotions in "My Sister" move from hating and loving to ultimately missing the sister; and most tellingly, she insists, "Just don't touch/I don't like to be touched," in "I Got No Idols." The music underscores the mood; the songs usually end with sustained, unresolved chords.

If a major-label deal has raised the stakes, Hatfield counters by raising the volume, playing all the guitars. Producer Scott Litt gives the album a spacious, varied texture, and her band knows when to embellish, never forgetting that Hatfield's songs and voice are the focus.

Her soprano has become more nuanced, able to imbue potentially embarrassing lines – "She's the one who would have taken me to my first all-ages show/It was the Violent Femmes and the Del Fuegos/Before they had a record out, before they went gold" – with conviction and also make "Mommy's here, she's going to tuck you in" sound menacing. There's a new-found confidence that allows her to kiss off a guy with "Feels like a heart-break/But it wasn't all that great/I never came that close."

If Become What You Are has a flaw, it's the weakness of its slower songs. "Mabel" has a nice sense of dynamics but a negligible tune, and "For the Birds" is pretty but generic. The album's one true clunker is "President Garfield," an unintelligible mess that starts out with a lovely descending Beatlesque figure but switches midway to metallic boogie. (RS 668)

STEVE MIRKIN