American Thighs

Maybe I'm second guessing people here with the intro passage but Veruca Salt were heavily criticised in some quarters...1.) For supposedly jumping on the post grunge bandwagon, 2.) For being fronted by two admittedly attractive female singers/guitarists. Nina Gordon and Louise Post are not a pair of talentless bimbo's though...these two can sing and play. American Thighs is their first album and was recorded pretty much on the cheap by Brad Wood..and for the most part it sounds like Breeders but with a bit more punch.

Not expecting Thighs to be much more than just the simple notion of getting a record out there....Veruca Salt surprisingly exploded onto the scene with their debut single Seether. Not yet released at the time, it still got a ton of airplay and Veruca Salt were soon one of the biggest buzz bands on the alt-rock scene...that's where alot of jealousy towards them in the music press also came from, they did not slug their way through 100's of gigs before getting recognition, they got a quick break. Seether deserved to get them their break, it's stormer of a song with a riff so infectious you won't get it out of your head for days, it's strength lies in the fact that it is poppy yet viciously rocking at the same time.

American Thighs starts with the explosive yet introspective Get Back and there is alot of this tugging between being introspective and full blown rocking out, throughout American Thighs, which makes for a compelling listen. Spiderman '79 has all the muscular riffage of a stadium rocker, yet is delivered in such an innocent way that it possibly could only be delivered by a female fronted band. whilst Wolf (a song I've read being about the death of Louise Post's cat) is a grower, that starts off slow and then builds up into a crescendo of suppresive guitars.

A lot has been tried to been made of the difference of the two leads Nina and Louise. Instead of writing together, they write separately and sing on the songs they write...Nina is supposedly more the pop writer and Louise more the instropective rock writer. These theories fall down , when Louise comes out with the sizzling Victrola....probably the most direct and simple little rifforama of a song on the entire album and Nina produces to equally dazzling effect 25, an over seven minutes long slowburn rock epic. Other winners up Louise Post's sleeve are Celebrate You, a sweet endearing dazzling pop song..that may not grab your attention at first as a standout track but gets better with every listen and then there is All Hail Me with its driving rhythm section and it's creepy lyrics about serial killers. Nina Gordon responds with the stop/start free-wheeling dynamics of Forsythia and possibly the best song on the album Number One Blind. Despite having the albums silliest lyrics (it's about a blinds company) ...Number One Blind is a perfect pop rock song with an insanely catchy bassline and lead guitar by Louise Post that is simply divine and finally add the faded dream-like Sleeping Where You Want,with it's isolated guitar dangled delicately to complete Gordon's repetoire.

I must say I love these girls lyrics though even the audacity of a song about a blinds company is endearing, and you've also got an equally silly offering in Victrola a song about getting a Victrola radio for Christmas. However they can be equally as endearing or down right scary. Compare the introspective sweetness of Celebrate You to the rage of Seether. It's also the quirky turns of phrase such as ' A spider monkey is a good lie' (Forsythia) or 'You smell of corduroy and lemon drops' (Spiderman '79) that I find so compelling, the sort of lyrics that suggest Miss's Gordon and Post are about as cranked in the head as a typical Brittany Murphy film character.

Despite a few misfires the forgettable Twinstar and the awkward sounding Fly (for once the lyrics come unstuck and don't seem to fit on this acoustic number) ..I'd still give this album a full blown 10 out of 10. I'm not suggesting it is perfect (no album is) but it's hardly been out of my rotation since I got it and it gets better with every listen...well maybe not after every listen.