Veruca Salt “Laughing In the Sugar Bowl”
Remember Veruca Salt? Remember ‘American Thighs’ and the songs “Seether,” ”Number One Blind” and ”Victrola”? Remember Louise Post and Nina Gordon? I sort of do.
I am embarrassed to say that I was so caught up in everything else that was going on in my life in the early nineties that the music I loved and would have loved was sat on the backburner.
Let me say that again… ‘the music I loved’… and not necessarily the music I was playing on the radio. Let’s see. In the early nineties I was all-busy getting married, playing mediocre AM radio schlock, getting fired from the job where I was playing that mediocre AM radio schlock, and getting hired at (and fired again from) another station where I was playing more mediocre AM radio schlock.
I should have been healing myself by listening to bands like Veruca Salt and Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins but… well, better late than never. I have made up for lost time in the past 10-15 years.
When you look at the line up for Veruca Salt over those years, it has been volatile to say the least and the fact that the core is back together with ‘Ghost Notes’ and “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl,” is a very cool and very refreshing thing.
I have to remember that I am getting old. I hate to admit it but it might be true. And for as much as I listen to everything and hear the merits in almost anything, nostalgia does have a tendency to rule my tastes more often than not.
So hearing what I can only describe as the fresh, clearer, slightly cleaner, a-tad-leaner rock-grunge-alt-pop sound of Verusa Salt is refreshing as hell. And hearing “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl” cleanses my soul the way “Seether” should have almost a quarter century ago.
Sometimes it seems like the lyrics don’t make sense. But that’s not the point. What comes first is the sound. I have to admit that when it comes to listening to songs that are new (or new to me) the words sometimes become lost to me until after repeated listens or, thank god for the Internet, a quick online search. I know that I am not the only one who feels this way – especially with the continued popularity of lyric videos over the past couple of years.
But listening to songs by Veruca Salt and The Pixies for the first time can sometimes throw you for a loop as you try to translate what the hell they are trying to tell you. So I have come to that medium-happy place where I just listen to the song and try to decipher what the lyrics and the tune mean to me. To me… at that moment. That’s all that matters. And that’s the case with all music when you are sitting on a bus plugged into your own tunes — tuned into your own thoughts and lost in your own world.
As for Verusa Salt’s over all sound, they are back with a vengeance and they have joyously expanded on their original sound. But with age comes wisdom and beauty and I think there is something about “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl” that is better than ever.
Some might fault the sound of the song as being almost too poppy or too ‘catchy.’ (Is that possible?) But that sound is clean and infectious right from the start.
I have bestowed the virtue of the slow build of a song on more than one occasion and how it can help draw the listener in to the story the singer/songwriter is trying to tell. But I am not married to the technique. And I love that “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl” relentlessly rips right into the first verse — grabbing hold of you and refusing to let go.
Dare I say it could be as close to a perfect alt-rock-like song as there can be; with strong vocals (the way they string together the versus is immediately memorable), infectious guitars, killer bass lines, and driving drums. Oh and did I mention that I fell instantly in love with Post and Gordon? Head over heels! They look AND sound better now than then! And I will never forget them.