Veruca Salt at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (23 July 2015)

Veruca Salt Setlist

Prince of Wales I’m Taking Europe With Me Black and Blonde Straight Laughing in the Sugar Bowl Forsythia All Hail Me Empty Bottle Come Clean, Dark Thing With David Bowie Don’t Make Me Prove It Shimmer Like a Girl Triage Spiderman ’79 The Museum of Broken Relationships Seether Alternica — Encore — Earthcrosser Shutterbug Volcano Girls

Tour Dates

 

Reformed Veruca Salt is back on tour in support of their latest 2015 Ghost Notes (El Camino), their first “real” Veruca Salt album since 1997’s Eight Arms to Hold You.

 

New York’s Charly Bliss opened up the show, a tad later than advertised. But we soon discovered that it was well worth the wait, the young band had a very 90s alt girl rock (think Eve’s Plum). It’s hard not to like the band, especially seeing singer Eva get really excited about playing their songs.

The band was only three days on tour with Veruca Salt, but already, they exclaimed, “These are the best three days of our lives!” They also noted that no one cared about them in New York, but when they’re on tour with VS, that their fans are just the best people.

They had spent 11 hours driving from their previous show to the Cedar Cultural Center, and according to the band, “Between St Louis and Minneapolis, there’s only corn.” They were now experiencing what they called “Corn PTSD” (post-traumatic stress disorder).

Highlight of their set was for “Dairy Queen”, when Eva explained was about working on her birthday four years ago at the Dairy Queen… which incidentally was the next day (July 24th). Instantly, the audience started singing “Happy Birthday To You”, but was jokingly shushed when they said it wasn’t until tomorrow.

The band is still very new, with only a couple of EPs (Soft Serve and A Lot To Say), and they played those with new demos/unrecorded materials.

What can I say about Veruca Salt that hasn’t been said? The band was on top of the world but for one reasons or another, a big old fight broke up between Louise Post and Nina Gordon… resulting in Gordon leaving the band in pursue her solo career. While Post continued using the name and released several albums, many felt that Ghost Notes is Veruca Salt’s true third album.

Most of the fans at the Cedar Cultural Center show, was also at their previous reunion show at the Varsity Theater last year. Many of them buying the VIP package to meet/greet the band, and some of them drove as far as Canada. While the band has been absent for a while, as demonstrated by their dedicated fans, the band has not been forgotten.

As with the new album tour, about half of their set featured songs from Ghost Notes (“Prince of Wales”, “Black and Blonde”, “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl”, “Empty Bottle”, “Come Clean, Dark Thing”, “Triage”, “The Museum of Broken Relationships”, and “Alternica”), mixed in between songs from their beloved debut American Thighs and Eight Arms to Hold You.

Early in their set, Louise had problems with not able to hear herself and removed some plexiglass over the amps, so she can hear herself, but otherwise, the band sounded in top shape.

Some tidbits about their songs: “Shimmer Like a Girl” was “about girls in Minneapolis” while “Triage” was about “a big nasty fight”. Truly the best (and most accurate) description was for “Alternica”, which Nina said was their “most rock opera song we’ve ever wrote.” It was truly epic, and worthy to end their set.

The three-song encore started with “Earthcrosser”, followed by “Shutterbug”, and ending with my current favorite Veruca Salt song, “Volcano Girls”. According to the band, they recorded that song when their then-record label, Giffen Records, flew them to Hawaii to record Eight Arms to Hold You.

Judging by the success of the new tour and last year’s tour, Veruca Salt is back and here to stay. Ghost Notes is out now on El Camino.