“Ghost note” is a jazz term that refers to notes played passingly and lightly between other notes; common to drums as well as pitched instruments, it’s a faint, unaccented note that usually functions in conjunction with other ghost notes to create a feeling or impression or to add texture and inflection to a phrase. When removed, what is left is rather stale. As such, Veruca Salt’s “Ghost Notes” seemingly refers to everything that has happened under the radar over the last 18 years between Veruca Salt members Louise Post and Nina Gordon—everything that had to happen between point A and point B to lead to this moment.
Post and Gordon’s less-than-friendly split has been recently sutured. When Gordon left in 1998, Post continued to carry Veruca Salt with various members. As time never fails to prove that it heals all wounds, the original lineup is back, and they haven’t missed a beat.
As Veruca Salt’s arguably most hard-hitting, kick-ass albums were 1994’s debut, “American Thighs,” and 1997’s veritable glitter bomb, “Eight Arms To Hold You,” it’s high praise to say that “Ghost Notes” sounds to “Eight Arms” what Radiohead’s “Amnesiac” sounds to “Kid A.” It feels a lot like a full-length B-side compilation. Along those lines, it’s hard to say that it’s as good as “Eight Arms,” but to even approach that level of alt-rock glory is a feat. Furthermore, from the drums to the vocals, everything sounds like it was recorded during those ‘90s sessions.
Veruca Salt’s distinctive sound is largely due to Gordon’s and Post’s inimitably forever-young vocals, which go together like milk and honey (or soy milk and maple syrup for vegans?), but otherwise they didn’t reinvent the wheel of femme rock so much as make it perfectly round and smooth. Among their heyday peers, they made The Cranberries seem sour, and they effectively neutered The Breeders, hoisting them upon their own fuzz-pedaled, vocal-distorted petard.
With “Ghost Notes,” however, there is less of the lyrical caprice of the ‘90s and more middle-aged, 20-20 hindsight. Surely they couldn’t have imagined that with “American Thighs,” they were shaping hipster imitators decades in the future, and this album almost seems to say, “Oh, is this what you were trying to do?” [insert crunchy wall of power chords].
It opens with “The Gospel of Saint Me,” which almost sounds like a second nod to AC/DC (the first, obviously, being “American Thighs”). With Jim Shapiro’s signature stuck-too-hard drums and starting off with a lick by bassist Steve Lack, it feels immediately like an old shoe, and the famously self-narrative duo assure you what is about to happen: “It’s gonna get loud / It’s gonna get heavy.” But that’s not just in reference to the album; it’s a promise from the newly-reformed quartet that court is in session and ass kicking will now resume. While it maybe has a slightly blunter edge than “Awesome,” it modulates and cheers the same way and ends with an appropriate sonic pummeling.
“Black and Blonde” stays just as heavy, with a hook that harkens Ted Nugent and fitting lyrical bravado: “I’ll spell it out for you / I’m the greatest fucking thing that ever happened to you.” Unlike Kanye West, they may actually be entitled to that lyric. Gordon actually wrote and recorded this a few years ago, but it hits harder with this lineup performing it, and blonde Post’s vocals shimmer alongside brunette Gordon’s. Following is “Eyes on You,” which still hits hard but features a hook that in its simplicity brings to memory Lit’s irritating “My Own Worst Enemy.”
The reminiscing begins with “Prince of Wales,” which growls with even more grit than the previous tracks. It’s stunning to hear something so transparently dated that still works in 2015 without sounding like a gimmick. No female-fronted band has been able to rock a ballad and burn it down like Veruca Salt does since Heart.
[At this point, however, it becomes impossible to ignore Shapiro’s lackluster drumming. He can play quietly, and he can also smash the hell out of things. He plays to the song and is sensitive to form. He brings the energy to the table. As a rock drummer, he more than suffices, but players like him are the reason that drummer clichés exist. Wanna leave the click off in the studio? Awesome. Can’t play in time without it? Better turn it on. As percussionist Larry Ferguson once sarcastically noted, “Chicks dig it when I rush my fills.” Jim, they really, really don’t. “A” for enthusiasm, “C+” for accuracy. Take two!]
“The Sound of Leaving” is almost “Benjamin.” Same tempo, same chord progression. Benjamin is better. This is a casualty of using stock chord progressions—in this case, I, III, VII, IV. Veruca Salt isn’t alone in accidentally almost rewriting a song—and it doesn’t mean they suck—but musicians possessing more developed and varied harmonic language don’t fall into this trap.
From Tori Amos’ “Cornflake Girl” to Ani DiFranco’s “Hide and Seek” and from Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” to Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” where would femme rock be without some good ol’ misandry? “Love You Less” is another “I don’t need you” anthem, with blistering lines like “I count my blessings and I count my lucky stars / I can count you on my fingers / That’s how small your are.” Bam! Emasculated!
For better or for worse, they saved the single, “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl,” for the middle of the album. Also for better or for worse, it sounds a little like The Breeders covering The Bangles. It’s by far the most crafted song at this point in the album, though, packing a lot of fist-banging into a little over two minutes with the same playfulness of “Volcano Girls.” Speaking of “Volcano Girls,” in which they refer to “Seether,” they keep up their tendency toward self-reference in the video with “Poet” and “Liar” T-shirts that refer to the lyric, “What a poet / What a liar.” The lyric itself could refer to Amy Sutton or Plato, but one secretly hopes for hilarity’s sake that it’s actually a veiled Bjork reference.
One can guess what “Empty Bottle” is about easily enough. It’s almost six minutes long and spans from delicate lows to screaming highs. Lyrically, it evokes “Earthcrosser,” with lines like “Banging my head against a wall of sound / Wall like a love it brings me to the ground.” However, rather than the relative whimsy of 1997 (“And the ringing in my ears from playing too loud / I hear the ocean, I hear the crowd”), “Empty Bottle” seems to be more of a makeup song between Gordon and Post. It also doesn’t have quite the devastating tectonic impact of “Earthcrosser” (which would be hard to trump).
Like the previous track, the gist of “Come Clean Dark Thing” is apparent. “I’m Telling You Now” is the same: a bandmate makeup song. Suffice to say that when a band is broken up for the better part of two decades over drugs and cheating, there must be a lot of emotional material with which to write songs. On the other hand, “Triage”—a play on words referring not only to the assessment of a wound but a three-way conflict—refreshingly turns that fury outward toward an unnamed third party. One of the stronger tracks, it resembles “Shutterbug” in some ways, lurking low in the verses and rocketing into the stratosphere in the choruses.
“Lost To Me” lags and could have been safely trimmed from the album. While it lacks the gravity of other ballads, it does finally build nicely at the end. But “The Museum of Broken Relationships” picks up in the vein of “Love You Less”:
He’s a cheater, a bottom feeder
In this box a lock of his hair
Jubilation, he loves me again
Halalala I don’t care
Veruca Salt likes to end things on a slow and heavy note, and they do so again with “Alternica.” However, the grandeur here almost seems to parody itself. While a chorus sings “All hail Alternica,” we are left to wonder if it’s irony. Chimes enter the mix amidst sloppy drum fills. Then orchestral horns expand the panorama further, leaving a bewildered listener in their wake.
Intentional or not, maybe this is Veruca Salt’s way of echoing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair.” The quartet has come full circle, joined hands once more and buried the hatchet. “Ghost Notes” is their strongest offering since the ‘90s, but having left the bar high, it would be no easy feat to even match their former grace. It almost just breaks the ice, and their next album will be more telling of what Veruca Salt of the new millennium are capable of. “Ghost Notes,” despite everything it does well, is merely a shadow of the past. Of course, anyone who came of age in the ‘90s has to hear it, but it’s also worth a listen for anyone who is wondering where the hell rock music went.
