This week in Freak Scene, we check out System, the latest from Izzy Hagerup, a.k.a. Prewn, formerly of Northampton and now in L.A.

Even without knowing the backstory, you can hear in the songs that Izzy Hagerup’s new album as Prewn emerged out of turmoil. Indeed, Hagerup made System by herself, often in the middle of the night in her bedroom in Northampton (she has since moved to Los Angeles), while working through a smorgasbord of uncomfortable emotions. The nine thorny indie-rock songs on System are personal enough that Hagerup has likened them to “a private journal made public,” though I always wonder about descriptions like that. If you are a recording, performing musician who writes songs as a way of finding a signal in the static in your head, are you really going to just keep them to yourself?

PrewnSystem

That’s not a complaint, by the way. System doesn’t make for easy listening: it’s raw and sometimes jagged, but the songs are as compelling as they are discomfiting. Hagerup sounds like she wants to escape herself on “Commotion,” her voice quavering through a blend of piano and guitars pegged to a rhythm part with a surprising amount of movement: it’s not quite funky, but it’ll make your hips twitch. Her vocals are more like a drawn-out moan on the title track, and they blend with overlapping layers of violin that move in and out of discord. With a clock-like ticking and a melody that is almost lilting, “My Side” would be twee if not for the dire lyrics, and the ominous synthesizer and precise, geometric electric guitar lines that build throughout the song.

As the album unfolds, there’s a sense of the inexorable about System, as if the songs and music and emotions are sliding slowly toward an event horizon that will devour them. The mix of bleak lyrics and disconsolate vocals on “Forgot,” for example, or grotty, bass-heavy guitars on “Dirty Dog” only add to a growing feeling of inevitable calamity — until the last track. With unaffected vocals and violin creaking through strummed guitar chords, “Don’t Be Scared” is definitely not buoyant, but the song closes System with Hagerup offering herself, or anyone else, some hard-won wisdom: don’t give up. Clearly, she hasn’t, and we’re all the better for it.

Prewn plays an album-release show Saturday, Nov. 29, at the Drake in Amherst with Burlington, Vt., alt-rock band Robber Robber (tickets).

Juliana Hatfield Relocates for ‘Lightning Might Strike’

Though Juliana Hatfield has long been associated with the Boston music scene, as part of the Blake Babies, the Lemonheads and on her own, she pulled up stakes a couple of years ago and moved — to Western Mass.

This is where she wrote and recorded her new album, Lightning Might Strike, which is due Dec. 12. It’s Hatfield’s 21st solo album in a career that stretches back to 1986, when she co-founded Blake Babies with Freda Love and John Strohm while studying at Berklee College of Music. When the band broke up in 1991, she joined the Lemonheads before releasing her first solo album, Hey Babe, in 1992. She’s been honing her knack for catchy melodies and spiky lyrics ever since, on her own and in collaborations with a host of indie-rockers, from Paul Westerberg to Minor Alps, her project with Matthew Caws from Nada Surf.

She’s still got it on the first few songs from Lightning Might Strike, which she recorded with Chris Anzalone on drums and Ed Valauskas on bass.

We’ll leave it there for this week — thank you for reading! If you like what you’ve seen, please share. Also, I’m always open to submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.

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