Anyone who was listening to alternative radio in 1994 knew the
\nsong “Seether.” The first time I heard it, I wasn’t sure who I was
\nlistening to, but I knew that I liked it. The snap of the snare
\ndrum and hi-hat cymbals with the jangly guitars, the intertwining
\nof the two female vocalists… whoever this band was, I was going
\nto snag their album fast!<\/p>\n
The independent success of Veruca Salt led to a major label
\nbidding war. When the smoke cleared, DGC won, and
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> (which had already been released on Minty
\nFresh) showed that the band lived up to the hype… barely. (Easy
\ntrivia question: What movie did the band’s name come from? E-mail
\nme with the answer… I’ll take all the correct answers at the end
\nof Monday, draw one e-mail at random, and will send that person a
\nsmall goodie pack.)<\/p>\n
The two-guitar-vocal attack of Nina Gordon and Louise Post was
\nthe hook that made Veruca Salt so infectious in the beginning. The
\nslightly conflicting harmonies in the vocals seemed to add a
\nspecial edge to the music that is still well-remembered from
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i>. “Seether” is still a great track that I
\nhave yet to get tired of listening to. The bass work of Steve Lack
\nand the trap work from Jim Shapiro is just as important to the
\nsound of Veruca Salt; when Shapiro left the band, I think that’s
\nwhen Veruca Salt started to die a little bit.<\/p>\n
However, the unheralded track from this album was a minor radio
\nhit: “Number One Blind.” This track might even be better than
\n“Seether”; the opening guitar chords alone are enough to hook me
\nwhenever this track comes on my stereo. From the simplistic but
\nsuitable lead guitar line to the harmonizing on a product trade
\nname, Gordon and Post simply have a great track in this song, and
\nit should have been a bigger hit for them than it was.<\/p>\n
However, a lot of
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> is rather plodding, and unenergetic. Tracks
\nlike “Spiderman ’79,” “Twinstar” and “25” just seem to fall on
\ntheir way out of the gate. Now, I know that bands can’t always play
\nfast songs, and they need to inject a few slower numbers to break
\nup any monotony. Unfortunately for Veruca Salt, the slower numbers
\nare their weakest points. I’ve listened to this album numerous
\ntimes since I bought it, and it has gotten to the point where I
\ndread listening to songs like “Spiderman ’79” again.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Veruca Salt,
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> has enough material to keep my interest
\nafloat. The opening tracks, “Get Back” and “All Hail Me” are a
\nstrong way to kick off this album, while “Forsythia” is a decent
\nenough effort that is a nice change of pace. However, “Victrola”
\ngot seriously overplayed in Chicago, and I really don’t like this
\nsong anymore. (For that matter, I wasn’t that fond of the track in
\nthe beginning.)<\/p>\n
So what could have been done to
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> to make it a better album? Easy: better
\nsongwriting on the slower numbers would have helped this album
\nimmensely. Had there been some serious song development on these
\ntracks, I think that
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> would have been an unstoppable album.
\nUnfortunately, we’ll apparently never really find out what this
\nband was capable of; they self-destructed earlier this year, a
\nlittle more than a year after their second album
\nEight Arms To Hold You<\/i> came out.<\/p>\n
Veruca Salt had the ability to be one of the true superstar
\ngroups in the alternative world. While
\nAmerican Thighs<\/i> has enough evidence of this, it showed that
\nthis was still a band in progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5977],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-35997","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-veruca-salt","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35997"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35997"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}