Remember Veruca Salt? Sure you do--funny name from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had a big hit in 1994 with "Seether"? Well, it turns out that they were actually kind of great.
First of all, let's talk about allusions. These gals had great taste: their band was named after a Roald Dahl character; their first album, American Thighs, was named after a line from AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"; and their second album contains two explicit Beatles references. The title, Eight Arms to Hold You was the working title of Help!, and "Volcano Girls" contains this hilarious verse:
I told you bout the Seether before
You know the one who's neither or nor
Well here's another clue if you please
The Seether's Louise
If you don't get the joke, listen to the Beatles' "Glass Onion." (If you still don't get the joke, go back and listen to "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "Lady Madonna," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Fixing a Hole," "The Fool on the Hill," and "I Am the Walrus").
And it's Eight Arms to Hold You that I want to talk about today as an underrated album. Rolling Stone gave it a meager 1.5 star review, and Allmusic claimed that those Beatles references belie the fact that it's just another overpowered guitar album: the album couldn't sound further from the British Invasion . . . if it had been recorded by the Prodigy"; "too often, the songs are buried by heavy guitars. Veruca Salt sound awkward when they try to rock out." And because Veruca Salt's lead singers are women, Allmusic and others compared them to the Breeders, L7, and other female rockers of the mid-90s, reminding one of PJ Harvey's comment that "I'm like anyone as long as they're female. If they've got dark hair it's even better"-(allusion alert!: "Shutterbug" was purportedly written about Harvey).
But all these 90s female touchstones are ultimately misleading, as is Allmusic's criticism that "every song on the record is powered by fully rounded heavy guitars and big, big drums -- a sound that went out of style in 1990." The real key to cracking Eight Arms to Hold You is all those allusions. It simply isn't true that "every song" on the album is anything, and definitely not anything specific. What Veruca Salt has done is taken all their favorite touchstones and mashed them together into a multi-period, multi-sound, melodic mess. So you've got a New Wave guitar line opening a song about David Bowie, hair-metal riffs powering essentially pop songs like "Straight," and Soundgarden-like grunge on the song about PJ Harvey. Yes, this is a messy, but it is also exhilerating: something like a mash-up a decade before its time. And in Veruca Salt's words:
Forget humility
what's coming over me
is awesome
God forgive me i know
it's so awesome
It's true that at 50 minutes, that album is at least 10 minutes long, and the last 2-3 songs don't do much to help it's cause. But until then, every song is powered by hooks catchy enough to make all those Beatles allusions meaningful. Check out circular guitar riff on "Don't Make Me Prove It," the pre-chorus on "Awesome," the back-up vocals on "The Morning Sad," and the downward leaning guitar line on "Sound of the Bell." This is an album that believes in the purity of a great hook, and pop music in all of its forms.
First of all, let's talk about allusions. These gals had great taste: their band was named after a Roald Dahl character; their first album, American Thighs, was named after a line from AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"; and their second album contains two explicit Beatles references. The title, Eight Arms to Hold You was the working title of Help!, and "Volcano Girls" contains this hilarious verse:
I told you bout the Seether before
You know the one who's neither or nor
Well here's another clue if you please
The Seether's Louise
If you don't get the joke, listen to the Beatles' "Glass Onion." (If you still don't get the joke, go back and listen to "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "Lady Madonna," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Fixing a Hole," "The Fool on the Hill," and "I Am the Walrus").
And it's Eight Arms to Hold You that I want to talk about today as an underrated album. Rolling Stone gave it a meager 1.5 star review, and Allmusic claimed that those Beatles references belie the fact that it's just another overpowered guitar album: the album couldn't sound further from the British Invasion . . . if it had been recorded by the Prodigy"; "too often, the songs are buried by heavy guitars. Veruca Salt sound awkward when they try to rock out." And because Veruca Salt's lead singers are women, Allmusic and others compared them to the Breeders, L7, and other female rockers of the mid-90s, reminding one of PJ Harvey's comment that "I'm like anyone as long as they're female. If they've got dark hair it's even better"-(allusion alert!: "Shutterbug" was purportedly written about Harvey).
But all these 90s female touchstones are ultimately misleading, as is Allmusic's criticism that "every song on the record is powered by fully rounded heavy guitars and big, big drums -- a sound that went out of style in 1990." The real key to cracking Eight Arms to Hold You is all those allusions. It simply isn't true that "every song" on the album is anything, and definitely not anything specific. What Veruca Salt has done is taken all their favorite touchstones and mashed them together into a multi-period, multi-sound, melodic mess. So you've got a New Wave guitar line opening a song about David Bowie, hair-metal riffs powering essentially pop songs like "Straight," and Soundgarden-like grunge on the song about PJ Harvey. Yes, this is a messy, but it is also exhilerating: something like a mash-up a decade before its time. And in Veruca Salt's words:
Forget humility
what's coming over me
is awesome
God forgive me i know
it's so awesome
It's true that at 50 minutes, that album is at least 10 minutes long, and the last 2-3 songs don't do much to help it's cause. But until then, every song is powered by hooks catchy enough to make all those Beatles allusions meaningful. Check out circular guitar riff on "Don't Make Me Prove It," the pre-chorus on "Awesome," the back-up vocals on "The Morning Sad," and the downward leaning guitar line on "Sound of the Bell." This is an album that believes in the purity of a great hook, and pop music in all of its forms.
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