Hopeless crushes. Eating disorders. Low confidence. Sweet vulnerability masked in angst and sung to simple melodies was the formula exclusive to Juliana Hatfield, the indie-rock virgin, whom girls longed to emulate and guys longed to deflower. |

With both a new record company and sense of self, Hatfield's set to release her latest effort, Bed, an album that factors another variable into her equation: maturity. "I think it's more adult ... I don't mean adult contemporary sounding, but I think it's a little more grown-up lyrically," she explains, her flawless face betraying no expression.

Despite the current trend toward production-heavy, layered recording, Hatfield opted for a purer, more stripped-down sound. "I had just been listening to things that were very raw and dry, the kind of things where you can really hear all the instruments very close to your ear when you have headphones on," she says. "I guess I was feeling raw, and I didn't want to pretty it up or put anything on top of it."

Bed, as the title implies, finds Hatfield treading on unexplored terrain. "I'm sick of sneaking around/When am I gonna meet your kids?" she shocks us with her childlike soprano on "Sneaking Around." Perhaps it's her way of letting us know that it's time, at long last, to banish the "Like a Virgin" headline that followed her up the college charts and onto the cover of Spin magazine a half decade ago. "I was just writing about what was going on in my life," she says. "Whatever I write, it's reflecting that."

Apparently then, there's quite a bit going on in her life, although she won't let on. "My life's so boring," she complains unconvincingly. But given that she was once tagged Evan Dando's "friend and sometimes girlfriend" (in the Head Lemon's own words, in fact), it's difficult to believe that the existence of this stalwart indie-rocker is anything short of, well, at least interesting. When conversation turns to Dando, Hatfield becomes surprisingly receptive. "Evan also got himself out of Atlantic," she says. "He's trying to find a new label and make some good demos."

The two recently recorded together again for a Gram Parsons tribute album. "When I was hanging out with Evan, that's all he listened to," Hatfield says. The record, scheduled for a January release, includes the likes of Elvis Costello, Wilco and Beck, who duets with Emmylou Harris.

Hatfield is not without her own label travails: She recently split from Mammoth Records, the label that helped put her on the musical map. "When [Mammoth] left Atlantic, they had to let me go and I wanted to leave," she says. "They didn't really care about me anymore or get what I was doing. And I just don't want to make music where I'm not appreciated, so I wanted to go somewhere I was."

Her new album is the first to be released on Zoe, a new subsidiary of Mercury. However, she has not signed a contract with them. "I'm free to go where I want after this," she says. "I'm very hesitant to commit to a long-term thing because of what happened. I realize everything can go bad so quickly and I just want to wait until I find something that seems really good."

Until then, Juliana plans to take her newfound, somewhat wavering self-esteem on the road this fall. "This stuff is more confident and laid back ... I think." (Liza Ghorbani)