When Veruca Salt returned to Boston last summer, Barry Thompson had some words of wisdom, and it all clicked while seeing the ’90s alt-rock band back in action, playing new song “The Museum of Broken Relationships.”
“Apparently it’s worth the trouble to unburn a bridge every now and again,” Thompson wrote in his Vanyaland review. “Any jaded souls who’ve been let down by one-too-many half-baked nostalgia reunions and showed up expecting a slog through Veruca’s greatest hits likely found themselves blindsided by happy surprise, because they expected very wrong. And to go unmoved by the sight of two old friends, one of whom allegedly used to write insulting lyrics about the other, hugging it out after orchestrating a thoroughly triumphant rager of a rock show would require a cold, not to mention guitar-music-hating heart.”
Those two old friends, of course, are Veruca Salt’s vocalist/guitarists Nina Gordon and Louise Post. And the idea that their unexpected return was less about nostalgia and more about creating new music and memories together — with the classic, ’90s-era lineup — has never been more apparent than today, when the band’s new album, Ghost Notes, is available to stream in full over on NPR First Listen.
Says NPR: “Ghost Notes is a comeback in more ways than one — it’s the first new music from the band in ten years, and it’s the first released by the original lineup since Eight Arms in 1997. A group of friends and musicians who have overcome internal turmoil and external pressures that caused them to part ways in the ’90s would sound this invincible. Embracing a throwback sound isn’t stagnation for Veruca Salt. It’s celebration.”
Listen to Ghost Notes below, check the new LP’s album artwork, and take note: Veruca Salt return, again, to the Paradise Rock Club on July 30.
Leave your nostalgia at the door.
