Ticking Like A Bomb

Veruca Salt @ Webster Hall 7/31/2015
Prince of Wales / I’m Taking Europe with Me / Black and Blonde / Straight / Laughing in the Sugar Bowl / Forsythia / All Hail Me / Empty Bottle / The Gospel According to Saint Me / Eyes On You / One Last Time / Volcano Girls / Don’t Make Me Prove It / Triage / Spiderman ’79 / Seether / Museum of Broken Relationships / Earthcrosser // Shutterbug / Shimmer Like A Girl / 25

The audience for this Veruca Salt show was the kind of audience you hope for when you see a rock show: visibly excited, intensely engaged, very physical, and singing along to even the brand new songs. To some extent, the people were just mirroring the band’s energy. Veruca Salt are the kind of band that make rock music look like the most fun thing you could possibly do, and they balance out that joy with a lot of darker emotions that allow for truly cathartic moments. The thing that really stands out in my mind is when they were playing “Shutterbug” and everyone around me – including myself – were just belting out the words at each other. I love this sort of thing, where it’s like we’re all performing our love of a song and connecting by mutually acknowledging that Louise singing “I can’t change / change / change” gets under our skin.

Veruca Salt “Black and Blonde”

I was so happy that people were so into the new Veruca Salt songs because I love them too, and it was nice to share that enthusiasm. You never know how this sort of thing will go – some audiences just go in and only want to see hits and zone out for the rest. (That definitely was the case when I saw The Smashing Pumpkins and U2 in the days leading up to this gig.) But it seems like the people who love this band are very excited about them being around now, and it’s not really a nostalgia thing. It looked like about 60% of the audience was women under 30, and I think for them, this is just an iconic band who’ve had a direct influence on a lot of the best rock music coming out over the past couple years. There’s a clear sense of continuity between what they were doing in the 90s, what they’re doing now, and what’s going on in indie music at this moment. But even if there’s other bands sorta like them these days, there’s certain things Veruca Salt bring to the table that the younger bands don’t really have. Nina and Louise have a lot more old school rock swagger, and I think that’s a combination of emulating the music they loved growing up, and just having way more experience as performers. Also, they’re not afraid of going BIG, and letting a song like “Black and Blonde” be the sort of towering sing-along anthem it ought to be. They don’t hold much back, and they kinda teach you to do the same.

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