ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 7, 1997 TAG: 9704070124
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: GREG KOT CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The band has achieved a new level of confidence in support of its second album, ``Eight Arms to Hold You.''
Singer-guitarist Nina Gordon turns to a couple of bystanders at Veruca Salt's rehearsal space and asks, ``Do you guys have earplugs?'' The voice is full of sisterly concern but she wears a look that says, ``You suckers are going to need them.''
She's not kidding. As the band blasts into ``Volcano Girls,'' it sounds mighty enough to rattle the warehouses down the block on this remote strip of Hubbard Street. Steve Lack's bass quakes like it wants to bust the confines of his amplifier cabinet. Shrieking poltergeists fly out of Louise Post's guitar gear, and the expression on her face from underneath a veil of jet-black hair is a cross between a grimace and a smirk; it suggests that she can not only live with this minor annoyance, she's starting to enjoy it. Gordon's spunky voice rises above the mayhem with keening certitude, while drummer Stacy Jones slams with the kind of self-confident precision that belies his status as the band's newcomer.
The song ends with Post and Gordon conferring about their unruly amplifiers. ``You sound really trashy,'' Lack pipes up. ``And it's workin' for me.''
After two weeks of interviews with the media in Europe, Post and the band are feeling good about testing the extremes of their instruments again. ``All that talking ... it really is about something,'' Post marvels. ``It's like I forgot we're a band after being away for so long.''
With their second album, ``Eight Arms to Hold You'' (Outpost), Veruca Salt issues a timely reminder of rock 'n' roll resolve. At a time when guitar rock is seemingly on the wane, when rock stars are at a premium, the co-ed Chicago quartet goes for the gold.
With its layered production, arena-rocking singalongs and lush power ballads, the album marks a huge leap from the charming but somewhat tentative popcraft the band was playing only three years ago as it began touring nationally in support of its debut album, ``American Thighs.''
Post and Gordon are now both in their late 20s, and they behave like sisters or best friends as much as the de facto leaders of one of the world's up-and-coming rock bands. They finish each other's sentences and trade puns.
Both women attended top-flight East Coast colleges - Post at Barnard, Gordon at Tufts - then drifted to Chicago where they were writing songs in their respective apartments when they met at a party in 1992. Soon they were playing folk clubs as a duo once erroneously dubbed by an emcee as ``Louise and Naomi,'' but the dream was to plug in and rock as soon as a rhythm section could be found. Lack came aboard on bass, then Gordon recruited her brother, Jim Shapiro, a gifted songwriter who had never played drums but was willing to give it a whack based on a lifetime obsession with John Bonham.
The band dubbed itself Veruca Salt, after the bratty adolescent booted out of Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory in the children's fairy tale. They had played only a dozen gigs when they were dropped into an industry fish bowl in March 1994 at the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, and emerged as the object of a much-publicized label bidding war. A few weeks later the Chicago-based Minty Fresh label released the group's first single, ``Seether,'' to immediate response from major rock stations around the country.
Post and Gordon found themselves in the right band at the right time - Chicago was already a focus of industry talent scouts after the success of Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Urge Overkill and other local bands, and female rockers were a particularly hot commodity. After the quartet was signed to Geffen Records, an alternative-rock stronghold, ``American Thighs'' went on to sell a million copies.
The rapid, serendipitous ascent was met by an instant backlash; even before ``American Thighs'' hit stores, the new kids on the block were getting bad-mouthed as an industry-bred sham by veterans of the notoriously jaded Chicago underground scene, and some tentative live shows further polluted the air of resentment.
``Our insecurities got pinned to the wall,'' Post adds. ``We knew we were on to something as a band, but we didn't know that we'd be exposed to everybody so quickly. The kind of hype we got didn't match our confidence in ourselves as a live band. ... We knew we had to go to boot camp, do the drill over and over again, before we became a good live band. And we toured for a year and a half and got better.''
The new attitude became apparent when the band got off the road and jumped back into the studio with Chicago noise-king Steve Albini to record a quickie EP of four songs.
The message came through louder and clearer when Veruca Salt enlisted Bob Rock to produce the album that would become ``Eight Arms to Hold You.'' Rock was famed for his ability to help bands such as Metallica and Motley Crue gain an entree to commercial radio with his crafted productions, and Gordon and Post wanted to take their time building their songs into sumptuous layer cakes. For the first time they orchestrated their guitar parts instead of merely doubling what each other was doing, and tinkered extensively with keyboards, percussion and other sound effects.
The wit and depth of the arrangements were greatly enhanced by the contributions of Lack and Shapiro, who left Veruca Salt soon after the album was completed to write songs for his main band, Ultra Swiss, and replaced by Jones.
``It's so amazing to me to reach a point where I'm hearing our record and thinking I wouldn't have done a thing differently,'' Post says.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Louise Post, Stacy Jones, Nina Gordon and Steve Lack areby CNBVeruca Salt. color.