Published on Oct 5, 1998
Anyone who was listening to alternative radio in 1994 knew the
song “Seether.” The first time I heard it, I wasn’t sure who I was
listening to, but I knew that I liked it. The snap of the snare
drum and hi-hat cymbals with the jangly guitars, the intertwining
of the two female vocalists… whoever this band was, I was going
to snag their album fast!
The independent success of Veruca Salt led to a major label
bidding war. When the smoke cleared, DGC won, and
American Thighs (which had already been released on Minty
Fresh) showed that the band lived up to the hype… barely. (Easy
trivia question: What movie did the band’s name come from? E-mail
me with the answer… I’ll take all the correct answers at the end
of Monday, draw one e-mail at random, and will send that person a
small goodie pack.)
The two-guitar-vocal attack of Nina Gordon and Louise Post was
the hook that made Veruca Salt so infectious in the beginning. The
slightly conflicting harmonies in the vocals seemed to add a
special edge to the music that is still well-remembered from
American Thighs. “Seether” is still a great track that I
have yet to get tired of listening to. The bass work of Steve Lack
and the trap work from Jim Shapiro is just as important to the
sound of Veruca Salt; when Shapiro left the band, I think that’s
when Veruca Salt started to die a little bit.
However, the unheralded track from this album was a minor radio
hit: “Number One Blind.” This track might even be better than
“Seether”; the opening guitar chords alone are enough to hook me
whenever this track comes on my stereo. From the simplistic but
suitable lead guitar line to the harmonizing on a product trade
name, Gordon and Post simply have a great track in this song, and
it should have been a bigger hit for them than it was.
However, a lot of
American Thighs is rather plodding, and unenergetic. Tracks
like “Spiderman ’79,” “Twinstar” and “25” just seem to fall on
their way out of the gate. Now, I know that bands can’t always play
fast songs, and they need to inject a few slower numbers to break
up any monotony. Unfortunately for Veruca Salt, the slower numbers
are their weakest points. I’ve listened to this album numerous
times since I bought it, and it has gotten to the point where I
dread listening to songs like “Spiderman ’79” again.
Fortunately for Veruca Salt,
American Thighs has enough material to keep my interest
afloat. The opening tracks, “Get Back” and “All Hail Me” are a
strong way to kick off this album, while “Forsythia” is a decent
enough effort that is a nice change of pace. However, “Victrola”
got seriously overplayed in Chicago, and I really don’t like this
song anymore. (For that matter, I wasn’t that fond of the track in
the beginning.)
So what could have been done to
American Thighs to make it a better album? Easy: better
songwriting on the slower numbers would have helped this album
immensely. Had there been some serious song development on these
tracks, I think that
American Thighs would have been an unstoppable album.
Unfortunately, we’ll apparently never really find out what this
band was capable of; they self-destructed earlier this year, a
little more than a year after their second album
Eight Arms To Hold You came out.
Veruca Salt had the ability to be one of the true superstar
groups in the alternative world. While
American Thighs has enough evidence of this, it showed that
this was still a band in progress.