Later, she’ll call to clarify her thoughts. “I just wanted to say that I think that what I’m trying to do in that song is implicitly make the case that I am rock as opposed to pop. I’m not just trying to define what rock is and what pop is. I’m trying to make the case that I’m rock and not pop.”

More than a definition of terms, “Rock or Pop?” is an indictment of what pop music has become in the era of faux reality-TV bands and manufactured hits. “Does god read the liner notes?/Does god watch the awards shows?”, Hatfield asks over a slinky guitar line, the sparest of backbeats, and no bass. “Think of the difference/Are you writing for an audience?/Or are you writing for yourself?/Very willing to go straight to hell.” This from an album that opens with Hatfield crooning “This is not a movie baby/A happy ending is not guaranteed/And this is not one of those songs for radio/You’re not going to write this one so easily” against an innocent backdrop of strummed acoustic guitar, handclaps, and a pleasant melody. When she sings, “I’ve been thinking for hours about it,” you get the sense that she’s been thinking about her role as a musician for days, months, maybe years.

The tension between Hatfield’s introspection and the outgoing personalities of Love and Gluck may be what makes the band, who really aren’t a band in any traditional sense, work so well. Their chemistry is palpable on Crushing Love, even though Hatfield and Love have a long-distance friendship and hadn’t seen each other in more than a year when we meet outside P.A.’s. Most of the work on the album was done via tapes sent back and forth in the mail. And then it all came together in an Indiana studio with little effort.

“It was never something we ever thought of as an ongoing thing,” Hatfield says of Some Girls. “I mean, the only reason we even made this second record was that Koch picked up our option for a second record.”

“Yeah, we were trying to decide if we should,” Love quips, “but we didn’t know how we were going to pay for another record, and it didn’t seem very feasible until Koch asked. And it all came together really fast, right before Heidi moved back to Canada.”

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Unfortunately, the future of Some Girls and the Blake Babies is very much up in the air. Strohm is now a lawyer, and Love, who’s developed a kind of joint pain that makes it difficult for her to play drums in the normal, seated position, is planning a big move to England with her husband and kids at the end of the summer. In the meantime, Hatfield is planning to release a live solo album this fall on her own label. “I know that we’ll get together again at some point,” she muses. “I mean, England’s just as far as Indiana. So, maybe we’ll do some shows in England. I don’t know. We’ve really never had a plan.”

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Some Girls: //www.some-girls.com/