Blow It Out Your Ass If you Don't Like It, Veruca Salt Is Back
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 24, 2013 3:20PM
If the Replacements can bury the hatchet* then we guess it should surprise no one that Veruca Salt's Nina Gordon and Louise Post have managed to do the same. The duo fronted the band in the early '90s and were at the forefront of the explosion of music that brought Chicago's music scene to national prominence, along with The Smashing Pumpkins, Fig Dish and others. "Seether," off their debut American Thighs, is a bona fide generational classic and "Volcano Girls" from their follow up Eight Arms to Hold You was an exceptionally strong second salvo. Unfortunately much of Eight Arms To Hold You had already started to show cracks in the songwriting, clumsily plastered over by Bob Rock's super slick production.
After Eight Arms Gordon left the band, and it wasn't a friendly split. In the Chicago music scene it caused ripples, choosing of sides and general unpleasantness. The friction between the two frontwomen was exacerbated when Post elected to continue on under the Veruca Salt name as the only original member. She surrounded herself with talented musicians but none of the new band's output stood up to the original band's work. Over in AOR land Gordon wasn't doing much better; recording pleasant pop that lacked the spark of her earlier songwriting.
In 2012 Post put the Veruca Salt name on ice and it appeared that would probably be the last we'd hear from them, until earlier this year when the band posted "for now let's just say this: hatchets buried, axes exhumed" on their Facebook page, signaling Veruca Salt had returned. What made the announcement truly exciting was that not only had Gordon and Post buried their hatchets, original drummer Jim Shapiro and bassist Steve lack were also back in the fold. Outside of nostalgic posts much was quiet on what the band would actually be doing until earlier this week when they confirmed they were returning to the studio to record new material with none other than Brad Wood, the original sonic architect behind American Thighs.
We're not going to pretend we're expecting some great return to form, but we'll admit we're happy to see what was once one of the deepest splits in rock get mended. And we're happy that, literally, the old gang is back together. But mostly we're pleased to see that, on the reunion front, the seemingly impossible continues to reveal itself as possible … so can a Triplefastaction reunion be far behind?**
[h/t A.V. Club]
*We know Tommy and Bob never really stopped getting along, but let's for the sake of this piece use the unlikelihood of an actual reunion as the comparison point here, O.K.?
**O.K., that's probably never going to happen, we know.