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Veruca Salt  

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Veruca Salt are a rock band hailing from Chicago, Illinois, United States who formed in 1993. Since their debut they have released five studio albums, along with four EP's, and have become one of the most beloved cult rock acts to every come from the 1990's.

Taking their name from the character in Roald Dahl's children's novel Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Veruca Salt was formed by singers and guitarists Louise Post and Nina Gordon, who came together in 1993 as songwriting partners. They spent a year and a half working on material together before putting a full band together, recruiting drummer Jim Shapiro and bassist Steve Lack to play their first handful of shows around the Chicago indie rock scene. These shows got them signed to Minty Fresh Records mere months after they started playing live, and after a succesful first single in the form of “Seether/All Hail Me”, they were tapped by Courtney Love's band Hole to open for them on a run of huge US headline shows.

The band's debut album, September 1994's “American Thighs”, would eventually be certified Gold thanks to this exposure, and the band signed a major label deal with Geffen Records as a result. “Seether” was re-released shortly after the band signed with Geffen, and was received huge rotation on MTV and radio stations all over the country. After the release of their second album “Eight Arms To Hold You”, cracks began to appear on the band's surface, beginning with the departure of Shapiro shortly after the album's release. Far more dramatically, Gordon left the band in 1998, her relationship with Post having long since soured. Post continued the band to the point where she was the only remaining original member of the band, taking several different line-ups through the release of two further studio albums and two EP's.

The band ceased activity in 2007, before announcing in 2012 that they were on indefinite hiatus. Ironically enough, the band then announced that the original line up would be getting back together full-time exactly one year and one day after their hiatus announcement. The band released their fifth studio album “Ghost Notes” in 2015, and in all, the band have done the impossible and made it look easy. They've come back together after a decade and a half apart, and are just as vital and exciting as they ever were. With their best days yet to come over two decades after forming, Veruca Salt come highly recommended.

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Somewhere in the mid 90's I got turned onto Veruca Salt and thank god I did! What ever happened to girl bands that freaking rock?! Well, after being a fan for several years, the girls finally had a tour date in my city, and I was all over it! Ticket bought within an hour of going on sale, and a good group of friends excited for the show! The show was in a club, average size, and none of us were really sure just how many people would turn out.

Veruca Salt had a lot of air play with the song Seether, and we just assumed that there would be a large crowd, but by show time, I would guess maybe 3500 people were there. Which in my opinion was perfect! I have always been a fan of club shows that are intimate and not overly crowded. So when the band hit the stage, the crowd erupted! No matter what anyone says about Veruca Salt, and its not often that I really do hear anything negative, these girls just know how to rock!

The stage set up was simple, no frills, just a drum kit, a banner and Veruca Salt kicking ass! The light show was great and the sound system was really incredible, somewhat mind numbing even, but isn't that what a rock show is all about!

The set lasted about 90 minutes and when it was over, I was so impressed with how good they sounded live and the energy they put out on stage! All in all a fantastic concert and I feel lucky that I got to see them live!

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It's the '90s again! Veruca Salt announces reunion tour

If you didn't get enough '90s rock nostalgia from Nirvana's Rock Hall of Fame induction performance last week, here's another hit for you: Veruca Salt is touring again with all of its original members.

The band, which found fame with the 1994 hit song "Seether," announced the 15 shows on Tuesday. This will be the first tour since 1996 for the original lineup of Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Steve Lack and Jim Shapiro.

Super+stoked+to+announce+our+first+live+shows+all+together+again+(as+nature+intended)+Details:+ http://t.co/aHsr3rLT1i + pic.twitter.com/CQWwuN3O5F —+Veruca+Salt+(@verucasalt)+ April+15,+2014

Veruca Salt had earlier announced that the band was back together and recording two new tunes — "The Museum of Broken Relationships" and "It's Holy" — to be released on April 19, Record Store Day. Their original label, Minty Fresh, will release the 10-inch, which will also feature "Seether." The upcoming release is Veruca Salt's first new music from the original members since their 1997 album "Eight Arms to Hold You."

Visit VerucaSalt.com for tour dates.

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Nicole Fiorentino Joins Louise Post of Veruca Salt For 2023 Summer Tour

Fiorentino is also featured on Post's new single "Guilty," with a music video that was released today (watch here)

Nicole Fiorentino has made a name for herself by electrifying stages with her tremendous bass skills with the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, Bizou, The Cold and Lovely, and many others. Now the bassist has linked up with singer/songwriter Louise Post of Veruca Salt on her solo material that was recently unveiled with her debut album Sleepwalker . 

Now Fiorentino is joining Post on a summer tour that kicks off June 12th in Vancouver, BC and concludes on July 22nd in St. Louis, MO. (see dates below).

Leading up to the tour, Post has released a music video for her single “Guilty,” which also features Fiorentino: 

Louise Post knows a thing or two about what it takes to stay relevant in the music industry: For the past three decades she’s been the co-frontwoman of the celebrated act Veruca Salt whose songs like “Seether” and “Volcano Girls” are still in regular rotation on alternative rock radio. Although Veruca Salt has consistently released music with Post as the sole constant member, during the pandemic she started writing a collection of songs that felt more personal and less like the follow-up to Veruca Salt’s 2015 return-to-form, Ghost Notes . “Out of nowhere, these songs started flowing out of me and almost appeared to be writing themselves” Post explains, adding that many of these melodies came to her during the transitive state between sleep and consciousness known as hypnagogia. “What was making itself so clear to me and just seemed so obvious was that this was my purpose: writing music, writing songs and releasing them.”

During these inspired solitary sessions, Post eventually wrote three albums worth of material and was able to edit it down to this collection of eleven songs with help from producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist, Matt Drenik (Lions, Battleme). “I’m a social creature and I love the magic of working with others. I also need to be held accountable, and I really believed in Matt and was excited about working with him as an artist and collaborator. He had come to know my songs pretty intimately and quite simply, he believed in me,” she explains. Correspondingly, Post was very active in the recording process, playing guitar, bass and piano, while a cast of other musicians helped her fill out the sound and collectively build the sonic textures that support this expansive collection of music. “There was a lot of collaboration in the studio: Some songs we built from the ground up and for other songs, I had a very clear idea in my head about how it should be produced and Matt helped facilitate that,” she says. In other words, Post was dedicated to her vision of Sleepwalker without feeling constrained by it—and that dichotomy allowed for happy accidents that only reveal themselves upon multiple listens.

From the mesmerizing and moody opener “Queen of the Pirates” to the electronica-inflected pop of “All Messed Up” and the Pixies-esque guitar grandeur of “Guilty,” Sleepwalker is an album that showcases the various aspects of Post’s songwriting while still staying true to the distinctive niche she’s carved out for herself through her work in Veruca Salt. “Of course I love guitar-driven music but that wasn’t important to me when I was making this album,” Post explains. “I was really focused on exploring when it came to the arrangements; on “Secrets”, it hit me one day that ‘this needs a trumpet solo’—and luckily Matt knew a trumpet player who really elevated the song.” (The same trumpetist brought his magic to “Don’t Give Up.”) “The sky was the limit when it came to orchestration on this album,” Post says. She also believes that the influence of her child exposing her to artists like Billie Eilish and Finneas and her own admiration for Post Malone and Imagine Dragons, among others, impacted her songwriting and helped give this collection a more modern sensibility.

However, despite the pop influences on Sleepwalker , there’s a darkness beneath the surface of these songs that gives the album a haunting quality that is far from accidental, it’s closely aligned with Post’s conceptual vision. “I have always identified as a sleepwalker,” Post says of the album’s title. “I slept-walked around my house routinely when I was a child, and even down the street. I believe in hindsight it was me trying to process what was going on in my home with my parents’ troubled marriage. As far as I know, I stopped sleepwalking after the divorce when I was eight, but it has always been a part of me that I feel protective of, a little girl who I feel sad for, “ she continues, adding that sleep has also served as her gateway to creativity. “Sometimes in college, I would have dreams in which I couldn’t distinguish between dream life and reality. I internalize what I see and read and in a very real way. I do not have thick skin and sometimes feel I am far too sensitive for this world. Songwriting helps me process all of it.”

That sensitivity and attention to her inner child is evident on this album, particularly when it comes to songs like the piano-driven “Hollywood Hills,” which Post herself describes as “wistful.” “I think [that song is] looking back lovingly on the past, paying homage to it, while drawing a clear distinction between the past and present,” she adds. “It’s a really bold thing to do at this moment in time for me personally to come out in a solo context after having been known for being in a band for my entire career.”

In that spirit, Post insists that recording and releasing Sleepwalker wasn’t only a creative endeavor but that she also felt a responsibility to add her voice to the common collective and be loud regarding injustices, whether it came to relationships (“All Messed Up”), feminism (“Queen of the Pirates”) or politics (“Killer”). “Throughout it all, I felt like my higher purpose was screaming at me, trying to wake me up from my despair and setting me on a path of creativity,” she says. “I had felt paralyzed and desolate as the pandemic set in and writing these songs helped snap me out of my stupor and reclaim a small part of the solution.”

Post is quick to add that her connection with and the interest generated by the fans she has cultivated over her career was also a motivating force during those difficult moments when self-doubt set in. “If they weren’t there I don’t know that I would have felt so strongly compelled to deliver this album, but with my listeners’ support I can say that I have the humblest opportunity to lift spirits and make connections through words and melodies with the magical medium of music,” Post explains.“The gift is mine and I am really grateful for it.”

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SLEEPWALKER

Minneapolis, mn, 7th street entry, los angeles, ca, chicago, il, empty bottle, st. louis, mo, nashville, tn, sleepwalker is an album that showcases the various aspects of post’s songwriting, louise post knows a thing or two about what it takes to stay relevant in the music industry: for the past three decades she’s been the co-frontwoman of the celebrated act veruca salt whose songs like “seether” and “volcano girls” are still in regular rotation on alternative rock radio. although veruca salt has consistently released music with post as the sole constant member, during the pandemic she started writing a collection of songs that felt more personal and less like the follow-up to veruca salt’s 2015 return-to-form, ghost notes. “out of nowhere, these songs started flowing out of me and almost appeared to be writing themselves” post explains, adding that many of these melodies came to her during the transitive state between sleep and consciousness known as hypnagogia. “what was making itself so clear to me and just seemed so obvious was that this was my purpose: writing music, writing songs and releasing them.”, during these inspired solitary sessions, post eventually wrote three albums worth of material and was able to edit it down to this collection of eleven songs with help from producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist, matt drenik (lions, battleme). “i’m a social creature and i love the magic of working with others. i also need to be held accountable, and i really believed in matt and was excited about working with him as an artist and collaborator. he had come to know my songs pretty intimately and quite simply, he believed in me,” she explains. correspondingly, post was very active in the recording process, playing guitar, bass and piano, while a cast of other musicians helped her fill out the sound and collectively build the sonic textures that support this expansive collection of music. “there was a lot of collaboration in the studio: some songs we built from the ground up and for other songs, i had a very clear idea in my head….

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Consequence sound, louise post announces debut solo album & 2023 tour dates, stereogum louise post “guilty”, brooklyn vegan, louise post announces first solo album, rolling stone, all the songs you need to know this week, icon vs icon, louise post unveils video for guilty – debut solo album, 107.7 the point, louise post premieres video for guilty solo sinlge, for press inquiries please use the form below.

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Veruca Salt’s Original Lineup Preps New Album ‘Ghost Notes’

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

The original lineup of Nineties alt-rock heroes Veruca Salt have delivered two new songs, “Laughing In the Sugar Bowl” and “The Gospel According to Saint Me,” off their upcoming album  Ghost Notes , their new LP and first together since 1997. The album arrives July 10th via El Camino Records.

While “Laughing In the Sugar Bowl” could have been unearthed in a box of unaired 120 Minutes episodes, it hardly suffers from nostalgia fatigue. Clocking in at just over two minutes, the fiery cut boasts a barrage of crunching guitars, sweet and salty harmonies courtesy of guitarists/singers Nina Gordon and Louise Post, and an indelible choral hook.

Album opener, “The Gospel According to Saint Me,” treads similar sonic territory with its stomping back beat and ragged guitars, ending with the perfect rallying cry to mark Veruca Salt’s return: “It’s gonna get loud / It’s gonna get heavy.” The track premiered on Chicago radio station WXRT and arrived with a lyric video as well.

Though Ghost Notes  marks Veruca Salt’s official follow-up to 2006’s IV , their last album with all four original members — Gordon, Post, bassist Steve Lack and drummer Jim Shapiro — was 1997’s Eight Arms to Hold You . After Gordon’s departure , the band continued to record and tour with an ever-shifting lineup under Post’s direction.

Brad Wood, who helmed the band’s 1994 debut, American Thighs , has come aboard again to produce Ghost Notes.  Wood was behind the boards for Veruca Salt’s 2014 comeback single , an exclusive 10-inch released on Record Store Day that featured their classic cut, “Seether,” and two new songs, “It’s Holy” and “The Museum of Broken Relationships.” The latter track will also appear on Ghost Notes ; a full track list is below.

Veruca Salt will also hit the road this summer for a handful of concerts in support of the album.

Ghost Notes  Track List

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1. “The Gospel According To Saint Me” 2. “Black and Blonde” 3. “Eyes On You” 4. “Prince of Wales” 5. “The Sound of Leaving” 6. “Love You Less” 7. “Laughing in the Sugar Bowl” 8. “Empty Bottle” 9. “Come Clean Dark Thing” 10. “I’m Telling You Now” 11. “Triage” 12. “Lost To Me” 13. “The Museum of Broken Relationships” 14. “Atlernica”

Veruca Salt tour dates

July 8 — San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar July 10 — San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s July 11 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey July 21 — Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge July 22 — St. Louis, MO @ The Ready Room July 23 — Minneapolis, MN @ The Cedar July 28 — Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace July 30 — Boston, MA @ Paradise July 31 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall August 1 — Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club

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Latest setlist, veruca salt on march 1, 2018.

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Veruca Salt’s Louise Post Shares Debut Solo Album Sleepwalker: Stream

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The post Veruca Salt’s Louise Post Shares Debut Solo Album Sleepwalker: Stream appeared first on Consequence .

You might know Louise Post as the co-frontwoman of ’90s alt-rock icons Veruca Salt , but she’s now going solo with Sleepwalker,  her debut album under her own name.

After Veruca Salt released their 2015 comeback album  Ghost Notes,  Post went back to writing music as usual. But the songs that began flowing out of her — which she says “almost appeared to be writing themselves” — felt much more personal to her than what she’d done previously with a band.

“I have always identified as a sleepwalker,” Post said of the album’s title in a statement. “I slept-walked around my house routinely when I was a child, and even down the street. I believe in hindsight it was me trying to process what was going on in my home with my parents’ troubled marriage. As far as I know, I stopped sleepwalking after the divorce when I was eight, but it has always been a part of me that I feel protective of, a little girl who I feel sad for.”

Taking influence from her own personal music heroes as well as new favorites she’s found through her daughter (namely Billie Eilish),  Sleepwalker  is a continuation of Post’s legacy for heavy hooks and witty lyrics. You can hear the usual spunk of Veruca Salt on the power-pop ripper “Guilty,” but it doesn’t feel like a way to pander to longtime fans as much as a natural progression of  Post’s songwriting in the 2020s. Stream the album via Apple Music or Spotify below.

Post also has 2023 tour dates lined up, beginning on June 12th in Vancouver and hitting 19 major cities across North America up through the tour’s finale on July 22nd at the Ready Room in St. Louis, Missouri. Find tickets at StubHub , where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program. StubHub is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.

Post teased  Sleepwalker  in an August 2022 interview on  Kyle Meredith With… , during which she also talked about her reaction to Olivia Rodrigo covering the Veruca Salt classic “Seether.”

Sleepwalker  Artwork:

Sleepwalker  Tracklist: 01. Queen of the Pirates 02. Guilty 03. What About 04. All Messed Up 05. Killer 06. Hollywood Hills 07. Secrets 08. All These Years 09. Don’t Give Up 10. God I Know 11. The Way We Live

Louise Post 2023 Tour Dates: 06/12 – Vancouver, BC @ Cobalt 06/13 – Seattle, WA @ Sunset 06/14 – Portland, OR @ MS Studios 06/15 – Boise, ID @ Treefort Music Hall 06/17 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge 06/19 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada 06/20 – Austin, TX @ Parish 06/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex 06/25 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah 07/10 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 07/11 – Raleigh, NC @ Pinhook 07/13 – Philadelphia, PA @ Foundry 07/14 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage 07/15 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom 07/17 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz 07/18 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison 07/20 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall 07/21 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club 07/22 – St. Louis, MO @ Ready Room

Veruca Salt’s Louise Post Shares Debut Solo Album Sleepwalker: Stream Abby Jones

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Veruca Salt Vocalist Louise Post Talks The Journeys Of “Seether”& Finding Her Creative Spark With ‘Sleepwalker’ (INTERVIEW)

Louise Post, photo by Jim Louvau

• By Mike McMahan
• One Comment

Louise Post has it made these days, though maybe not in the way you think. 

We talked with the Veruca Salt frontwoman and solo artist via Zoom about her journey 30 years into her career. 

She first found success in 1994 with her indie/alt-rock outfit Veruca Salt, when it burst onto the scene with the uber-catchy single “Seether” from its debut album, American Thighs , released by indie Minty Fresh. There was MTV support and successful tours. It was a huge time for alt-rock, led by Nevermind and the growing public acceptance of more eclectic music spawned from the underground.

Veruca Salt was fronted by two solid and talented frontwomen and songwriters, Post and Nina Gordon, who seemed cut from the same cloth as songwriters and guitarists. So much so that it was hard to imagine one without the other, and it wasn’t always easy to tell who wrote what without a glance at the credits.

But—like always—success came with a cost. Indie rock heroes? Not in Chicago, where they were regarded as sellouts. After American Thighs , they recorded the EP Blow It Out Your Ass, It’s Veruca Salt (originally titled Blow It Out Your Indie Ass , according to Post) with Steve Albini. The was a response to the grumbling. And then they shifted gears again with Eight Arms to Hold You , produced by Albini’s polar opposite, Bob Rock. And then, well, things went south. Nina Gordon left the band. Post soldiered on with a different lineup, releasing albums still beloved by fans but that didn’t resonate as well with the general public or lead to the same kind of success.

Veruca Salt had a successful reunion in the 2010s and they dropped the album Ghost Notes . The band is now on “indefinite hiatus,” though Post explained there are no issues, save logistical ones, while Post dropped a fabulous solo album, Sleepwalker , last year.

We talked about what Post regards as her favorite music gig, and you may be surprised to learn it’s not Veruca Salt or even her work as a solo artist. Oh, and we hit on having none other than superstar Olivia Rodrigo cover “Seether,” which Post described as “the little song that could.” 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There were a lot of years between Ghost Notes and Sleepwalker . When you’re not doing music, what are you doing?

I took a break from writing my own music or Veruca Salt music for some number of years because my daughter was five and started kindergarten. There wasn’t any music in the school, so I started volunteering. This was in 2015, right when Ghost Notes came out. I started volunteering and created a class with another fellow mom who was also a musician, and we did that for four years with our kids’ class. It was 75 kids. We brought them up and sang with them every week. We put on these elaborate concerts with parent bands. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a musician in LA. So many talented musicians were parents at the school. We sang with the kids and put on these concerts at the end of the year and winter break. I ended up being the de facto music teacher for the whole school. Well not the whole school, but pre-K through third. And I ended up starting a band with this woman and her husband, who was also in their previous band. That band is called Veils. I just released an EP under that name with them, which we recorded before the pandemic. It was going to be a full-length album, but we only got four songs done and the pandemic hit.

Right around that time, I naturally realized that if I continued to teach music to kids I would never make another record of my own. And Veruca Salt was on an indefinite hiatus and still is. There’s nothing negative happening except that we’re not creating music together. We don’t all live in the same city and the stars aren’t aligned for the moment. But I did start collaborating with these two friends of mine and created this band called Veils. At the same time, I started writing like a maniac. It just happened. I felt like I turned the faucet on—or someone did—and the songs started pouring out of me. The ideas. Dream ideas. I dream songs, I write while I’m driving. I started just recording demos and had a ton of them. I was sending them to Matt Drenik, who was someone I trusted and became the producer of Sleepwalker . He was really interested in working with me. Even now, my daughter goes to school much farther away than in the neighborhood. I look back on that time wistfully. It’s so recent but it feels like “wow, our lives were so small.” I wasn’t touring. I wasn’t recording an album. I got to be a stay-at-home mom and work at the school. And the work wasn’t work, it was teaching kids music and singing. My favorite thing. It was really such an honor to be able to do that. And honestly more terrifying than playing the Forum. Going in to sit in front of 25 kindergarteners was really something. 

You mentioned Veils, which brings us to Sleepwalker . You mentioned the production hook-up. But after Ghost Notes , after Veils, after all these years, why now? Why did you decide “this is the moment for a solo record?”

The solo record was demanding to be made. It wasn’t that I set out necessarily to create, write and release a solo record. I felt more like there was no escaping it. There wasn’t necessarily any great demand for me to make a solo record. I didn’t feel that coming from the universe necessarily or from my fanbase. I think people in my fanbase were hungry for more Veruca Salt and that we weren’t doing that. And I was writing. I had a conversation with Nina over the course of time—a few—and I said, “Look, if we’re not gonna make a record right now, I just wanna let you know I’m gonna make my own.” Because I’m an artist and have to keep writing, I can’t help myself, I just keep writing. At that time, I thought about other paths and what I might do. But music just kept calling me insistently. And I felt like I was being called to make this album. And that’s what I did.

The big change in Sleepwalker from the Veruca Salt records is in production and arrangements. The vocal melodies could be on Veruca Salt albums, but the songs would have had more riffs, distortion, and a more hard rock/indie sound. Would you agree? And, if so, how did that come about?

I wasn’t looking to make a rock record. I wasn’t listening to rock, and I didn’t have any desire to make a big rock record. In the past when I have kept the band going without the original lineup, I stayed true to the sound. (The songs) were naturally what I was writing. I kept the band going because I didn’t feel like it was over. The band, the brand, it was too hard for me to let it go. I was not letting the band go because we’re still a band, just not active. But I really wanted to explore more of what I was listening to at the time, which was a lot of stuff that my kid was playing for me. I grew up listening to all kinds of music. I wasn’t born on the day Nevermind came out. Or Bleach . I listened to Classic Rock, R&B, jazz. Then trip hop happened. I was in an R&B band in high school. Little-known fact. I’ve loved Prince— loved Prince—more than life itself. I wanted to be him, wanted to be with him. I idolized him and worshipped him. When I was 17, Purple Rain came out. So, it was on. And he was like my version of punk rock, you know? Dirty Mind and Controversey and all that. Really exciting music at the time.

I just grew up listening to all kinds of music, and what really changed my life was the Pixies’ Doolittle. Brian Eno Another Green World came to me around that time. While listening to Prince, I was also listening to The Cure and XTC’s English Settlement . That’s my favorite record by them. All kinds of music that came out of that era. And I’ve always just been crazy about music since I heard Abbey Road and David Bowie. “Golden Years” played on my little transistor radio. I always wanted to be in a band. I had Rumors and I used to stare and stare at the album cover. It’s so funny that I ended up in a band with another woman. Stevie and Christine McVie. And Nina was in her bedroom listening to Rumors and looking at the album cover. Regarding production, Matt and I just wanted to do something exciting and different. And also, more intimate.

“Hollywood Hills” feels like a true story. Is it, and can you share some of the inspiration? 

I woke up one morning with that song in my head. In my dream there was a band playing it. A female-fronted band. Two women. And it was more of a rock song. It was such a strong melody. I went to the piano and started playing the chords singing it and plucking it out. Finding the song. So it wasn’t that I sat down, and it was an idea that spilled out into this song. It was more like an impressionistic song filled with memories. It’s interesting that you say this, because it’s definitely more informed by own experience and own sort of melancholy. It’s not an actual story that happened word-by-word.

But it captures a moment in time and a feeling that I did experience. It also was influenced by a book called Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s a beautiful novel, and it touched me deeply. And it came to me at a time when I was feeling wistful about the past and letting bygones be bygones, what it feels like to have evolved and come to this mature place of acceptance. Where I can see people from my past with whom I had this tremendous love, conflict, and grief. I can see connecting at this age being a beautiful thing. And having a new, deeper understanding because the time has passed. That’s a lyric in the song “You’re the raincoat man/I’ll be the coffee cup/And I’ll run up to you in the future/We’ll be ok then/We’ll be all patched up/And we’ll know what to do and we’ll do it sooner.” 

Let’s talk about the horns on “Secrets.” Are those trumpets? French horns?

That’s my favorite part of the record! It came out of nowhere. I heard the solo being played by trumpets. I could hear the notes and picture the harmonies. This wonderful trumpet player named Kelly Pratt played on that song. And for that song, we played the notes on a trumpet keyboard sample and sent it to Kelly. And he played pretty much what I asked of him. It was born of my love of a song by Sufjan Stevens called “Chicago.” It harkened back to that song for me. I haven’t heard the song in a long time but it reminded me of that song when it came to me. And then, again, on “Don’t Give Up” I heard trumpets. I said “Matt, you’re not gonna believe it, I hear trumpets again.” I had a very strong sense of what I heard. In the case of “Don’t Give Up,” we sent it to Kelly with the idea, and then he loved the song and took it and ran with it. The whole outro is him. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. I thought my heart would explode.

According to “Volcano Girls,” you were a “Seether” back in the ‘90s. Have you mellowed with age? And—if so—does that allow the reflection of a record like Sleepwalker ?

I don’t think my husband would say so (laughs). I hope so, anyway. I hope that the type of vitriol I expressed in the ‘90s has morphed, at minimum. There’s still clearly a lot of passion behind my words and my feelings about the world and the politics of what is happening in it. That passion hasn’t diminished. It’s funny, I just wrote a banger about what is happening in the Middle East. I may say this too soon, but I think I have mellowed out of necessity because I was raging. I needed to come to terms with that. “You need to calm down/To figure it out.” I needed my life to be mellow and calm and centered and focused. I want to be a healthy, happy, whole person, who is grounded and centered and not fighting the world on my own. And so, I found a higher power, first of all, who’s not me. That took a lot of weight off my shoulders. I was always very suspicious of religious people and anyone religious. Any talk of God. But also envious at the same time. I didn’t trust them not to be fanatics. I needed to prove that I could do it on my own. Then, one day, I realized I don’t have to prove that; in fact, it’s too much of a burden to carry. I let God in and started to let go of the reins a bit. That happened, again, out of necessity. And needing to grow up. 

You’ve got more live dates coming up for Sleepwalker . You balance a good helping of Sleepwalker with Veruca Salt material. How do you know where the balance is? You’re excited about your new stuff, but the fans love Veruca Salt. 

It’s funny. I had no intention of playing any Veruca Salt on this last tour, except possibly in the encore. My vision was just playing Sleepwalker , even from start to finish. It came to my attention that all of my fans were placing bets on which Veruca Salt songs I would play. And they were excited to hear them, especially the ones that weren’t with the original lineup, because those were songs I couldn’t play on the Ghost Notes tour. Those are a little touchy (laughs). Somewhat touchy after all these years. A lot of my fans were like “is she gonna play stuff from Resolver and IV ?” I realized I was going to need to do that. Once I wrapped my head around that and got used to the idea, I got excited about it. I realized it was also the smart, strategic thing to do. Give the fans what they know and love and expect and hope to hear. It became fun to mix it up. The people who bought Sleepwalker and who love me and are embracing my solo career, there are certainly some new fans on board. I have no idea the numbers. But in terms of the majority, there’s people who followed me through Veruca Salt from the beginning or jumped on at any given point.

Did you see people discovering you because Olivia Rodrigo covered “Seether?” How did you feel about that and what was the response from younger people who are into her? 

I think it was all around very positive. I loved her first record. I loved her second record. My daughter was a big fan. When we found out she was covering “Seether” on tour, we were really touched by that. We thought it was so sweet and super cool. We went to her show in L.A, went to the after party, and she was so darling. Really, really genuine and kind. She met our daughters and gave them hugs and was really sweet to them. 

And she’s way cooler than you. It doesn’t matter if mom is in a rock band, mom is not cool.

Right, right. Of course (laughs). I don’t need my daughter to think I’m cool. In fact, I don’t need any of that. This is her life and her show. I have my career, but I don’t need my baby to think mom is cool. 

Louise Post upcoming dates:

4/24/2024 St. Louis, MO, Red Flag

4/25/2024 Nashville, TN, Blue Room

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Correction: the band she refers to is “Veyls,” not “Veils.”

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Veruca Salt Announce Syd & Melb Shows

• September 14, 2017

Frontier Touring are thrilled to confirm that alt-rock legends Veruca Salt will perform two special indoor shows in Sydney and Melbourne in March, as well as appearing nationally for the first time ever at A Day On The Green outdoor shows.

Veruca Salt’s signature hit ‘Seether’ remains one of the most-loved rock tunes of the ’90s. Not surprisingly, the band experienced a meteoric rise, doing everything a young band coming of age in the grunge era could hope for – selling more than a million records, touring with alt-rock royalty Hole and PJ Harvey, and winning critical acclaim for albums like American Thighs (named after an AC/DC lyric).

After breaking up in 1998, the original line-up – Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Jim Shapiro and Steve Lack – re-formed in 2013 and were warmly welcomed back on stage. In 2015 they released their fifth studio album Ghost Notes, the first to feature the band’s original line-up since 1997’s Eight Arms To Hold You:

‘As comebacks go, it’s perfect.’ – Magnet

‘Gordon and Post haven’t missed a beat. In fact, they might be better than ever.’ – NOW Magazine

In the live arena, Veruca Salt’s reputation was made through performances marked by energy, passion and verve – qualities that will once again be on display during this tour. Act quickly to secure your tickets!

VERUCA SALT

FRONTIER TOURING SHOWS Frontier Members pre-sale via  frontiertouring.com/verucasalt

Wednesday 20 September (2pm AEST) to Thursday 21 September (2pm AEST)  (or ends earlier if pre-sale allocation exhausted)

General public on sale from 10am AEST, Monday 25 September

Thu 1 Mar | Metro Theatre, Sydney, NSW (18+) ticketek.com.au | Ph: 132 849

Fri 9 Mar |  170 Russell, Melbourne, VIC (18+) moshtix.com.au | Ph: 1300 438 849

A DAY ON THE GREEN SHOWS

The Living End, Spiderbait, Veruca Salt, The Lemonheads, Tumbleweed and The Fauves

Visit adayonthegreen.com.au for more information on these outdoor shows:

Sat 24 Feb | Bimbadgen, Hunter Valley NSW Sun 25 Feb | Sirromet Wines, Mt Cotton QLD Sat 3 Mar | Petersons Winery, Armidale NSW Sat 10 Mar | Josef Chromy Wines, Launceston TAS Sun 11 Mar | Mt Duneed Estate, Geelong VIC Sat 17 Mar | Leconfield Wines, McLaren Vale SA* The Lemonheads not performing

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PJ Harvey, Veruca Salt and Bully share tributes to late collaborator Steve Albini

Yesterday, it was revealed that legendary producer, studio engineer and musician Steve Albini had died of a heart attack at the age of 61.

Steve Albini was notable for his work on legendary albums such as Nirvana’s In Utero , Pod by The Breeders, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa , Rid of Me by PJ Harvey, Things We Lost in the Fire by Low, and engineering many other albums. Tributes have come flooding in from his peers and collaborators.

" Meeting Steve Albini and working with him changed the course of my life ," PJ Harvey shared. "He taught me so much about music, and life. Steve was a great friend - wise, kind and generous. I am so grateful." Meanwhile, Veruca Salt reflected on their experiences as his friend, writing: "Those of us who were lucky enough to call him a friend know that he was also incredibly sweet, sensitive, and generous. He was funny and smart as hell, an excellent cook, and a fiercely loyal defender of the people he loved."

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Veruca Salt (@verucasaltband)

Bully worked at Albini's recording studio Audio Electric. In her tribute, she dedicated her career to Albini and the time he took to mentor her: "The ethics behind the way that studio operates are so powerfully humanizing in a way that is completely foreign to this industry. I owe my career to Steve and that studio. Thank you for cultivating a space in which I genuinely felt respected, safe and comfortable enough to ask questions and grow."

In an extensive thread on X , formerly known as Twitter, Thurston Moore shared a tribute to his friend writing, "Steve Albini was a person of passion and contradiction", whilst black midi's Geordie Greep said of Albini, "He was exactly as he comes across - as articulate and no bullshit as anyone could ever be, and effortlessly brilliant at his craft".

No further statements have been shared on Albini's passing.

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Olivia Rodrigo Adds Asia and Australia Legs to Guts World Tour

Olivia Rodrigo will tour Asia and Australia for the first time in her career, the singer announced Wednesday. Rodrigo has added nine international dates to her massive “ Guts ” world tour for a total of 82 shows globally.

The new dates kick off Sept. 16 in Bangkok, Thailand and continue through Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Melbourne, and Sydney, wrapping up on Oct. 19 at Qudos Bank Arena. Additional dates may be added as Rodrigo wrote on social media, “Stay tuned, Manila!” Fans in the comment sections of her social posts are eager to hear when and if Rodrigo will also be adding Latin American dates to the trek but that has yet to be confirmed.

Popular on Variety

The “Guts” tour has since made stops in New York, Houston and Dublin, and will make its way towards London in the coming weeks. It will conclude on Oct. 18 in Sydney.

Tickets for the newly added Asia and Australia dates will be available starting with the American Express presale in select markets.

Rodrigo performed “Vampire” and “Get Him Back!” at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Tuesday night, following Lil Wayne as the second performer of the evening. It was her second-ever appearance at the show as Rodrigo made her VMAs debut in 2021 when she performed her Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Good 4 U.”

“Guts” was released to high acclaim on Sept. 8 via Geffen Records and was preceded by two top 10 singles, “Vampire” and “Bad Idea Right?” “Vampire” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking Rodrigo the youngest artist to debut three No. 1 hits on the chart behind “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U.”

In an interview with Capital FM in England , Rodrigo said she wrote much of the songs on “Guts” with the concept of an accompanying tour “in mind.”

“I think there’s a lot of fun songs,” she said. “I wrote the album with a tour in mind, so I think they’re all songs I wanted people to be able to scream in a crowd. Hopefully, that’s what’s achieved.” A similar teaser — in the form of a faux ticket advertising “Olivia Rodrigo: Guts The World Tour” — appeared in a lyric video for “Making the Bed,” the sixth track off “Guts.”

Rodrigo last toured North America and Europe in support of her debut album “Sour” in 2022. It started on April 5 in Portland and ended on July 7 in London. Gracie Abrams, Holly Humberstone, Chappell Roan and Baby Queen served as opening acts.

Additional reporting by Jem Aswad.

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Music and Concerts | In memoriam: As a ’90s producer and music…

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Music and concerts | in memoriam: as a ’90s producer and music tastemaker, steve albini was brutally honest — and usually right.

Like, a lot a lot. The first time I met him was about 30 years ago. I was a graduate student at Northwestern University and assigned to interview somebody, and I had just bought “In Utero,” Nirvana’s follow-up to its blockbuster album “Nevermind.” Albini was the producer of “In Utero,” and one of my favorite albums, The Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa,” and so I called him, he agreed to chat, and while I remember little of what he said, I remember we talked for hours.

He had studied journalism himself at Northwestern, so he was generous. He had endless opinions on culture and music and what it means to stand by your convictions. I remember at some point simply asking what a record producer did. He said he wasn’t a record producer, he was a record engineer. I asked what that was, and he said it was like a record producer.

A year ago, the last time I spoke to him, I asked about his first concert , and he replied as he replied to everything, with too much knowledge and detail and an opinion so insightful and provocative and hilarious that it sucked the air from the room. The concert was the Edgar Winter Group, Sept. 27, 1975, Montana, where he lived as a teenager. He recalled his father saying people only went to rock shows to buy drugs. He recalled, as Edgar Winter launched into a 20-minute keyboard solo, the “dead-eyed gaze” of Johnny Winter “navigating solo breaks in this tumultuous excess, like Ahab resigned to his fate in a dinghy, tossed by the sea and pernicious corpus of his brother’s prog rock white whale …” He didn’t know if the concert itself was exactly a good idea, but: “An impressionable young Steve thanks whoever set it up for those enduring images of madness and futility.”

Albini talked like that.

He was an intimidating guy, and eventually, a sweet guy. He was, as kids say these days, a “gatekeeper,” the prototypical record store owner who frowns at what you bring to his cash register — though he made records, he didn’t sell them. The day after he died, the satirical website Hard Times posted this headline: “Steve Albini standing outside gates of Heaven telling everyone how much he hates the Smashing Pumpkins.”

He could go off on corporate culture and its deadening effects on artists and consumers (and did so elegantly at times, for literary journals like the Hyde Park-based Baffler ). He produced famous records and made lesser-known ones with his bands Big Black and Shellac, but also became, by dint of his taste, a sought-after totem of cultural integrity — a representative of a way of being. Or as comedian Fred Armisen told this newspaper several years ago: “Steve Albini became a huge influence on me, which I don’t know if he knows. He had this philosophy on how to live and be and gave me advice I still keep in mind.” As for Albini, he always kept it blunt: “I wasn’t a fan of Trenchmouth (Armisen’s Chicago-based punk band) — and so that’s not why we would have become friends.”

He was vintage Gen-X sarcastic, ironic, contrarian, defiantly principled. One of the best things ever written on music was Albini’s 1993 essay “The Problem With Music” for the Baffler, in which he laid out finances, empty promises, unnecessary flourishes. It opens with quite the metaphor: a band (“some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances”) standing at one end of a trench filled with waste and at the other end is a music industry “lackey” with a fountain pen and contract. Whoever swims the trench first will get the deal. Only then, the industry insists: “Swim it again, please. Backstroke.”

Thomas Frank, the founder of the Baffler, told me in an email that he never knew Albini personally, but that essay for the journal would become its “consummate expression”: “Seeing through the falsehoods of the culture industry was the first order of business, and no one was better at it than Steve Albini.”

By credits alone, Albini was not only a glue stick of underground music, and a major influence around the country as Wicker Park became an early ‘90s music mecca, but a tastemaker for what was once called college radio music and later rebranded “alt rock.”

He held it to ideals that no popular cultural business could entirely satisfy.

He recorded a who’s who of ‘90s Chicago bands (including Urge Overkill, Veruca Salt and Jesus Lizard); alt superstars (PJ Harvey, Bush); and the occasional icon (Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, The Stooges, Cheap Trick). He became known for applying loving sonic care to acts best known by their fields of distortion. He captured, as the cliche went, how a performer sounded live. But attaining clarity, power and honesty seemed deceptively easy. As Albini told Chicago magazine in 1997: “I honestly just feel that music like this deserves to be taken seriously. And that means people who record them should be as concerned about quality as if they were recording the (expletive) Chicago symphony.”

Yet, at the peak of his influence, he also said: “If you wanted to take punk seriously on a more significant level, you could. If you pretend to take dance music seriously on a more significant level, that is a delusional pretension. There really is no substance to it.”

Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick said they first met in the late 1970s. A teenage Albini sold him a guitar. Nielsen’s son Miles, now of the Rockford-based band Rusted Hearts, even helped Albini physically build his Electrical Audio recording studio in Avondale. When Albini later produced Cheap Trick, he was “a stickler, but excellent,” Nielsen said. He had “this reputation as a tough guy,” though Nielsen suspects “a lot of it came from record execs because Steve was so different. He was the most honest person in the music business.

“And that’s a list without a lot of company.”

Still, as Albini got older, he came to regret some of the hardline things he spouted. (He once wrote for a music zine that the Replacements’ breakthrough “Let It Be” was a “sad, pathetic end to a long downhill slide.”) Michael Azerrad, biographer of Nirvana and author of “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” posted Wednesday on X that Albini “was a great artist and underwent the most remarkable and inspiring personal transformation.” With years came warmth, pleasantness. He faced his incendiary urges. After all, here was a man who once, for a Northwestern art class, invited 100 of his enemies to throw stuff at him as he swore at them behind Plexiglass.

People threw dog poop, bricks, bowling pins.

Martin Atkins , former drummer of Public Image Ltd., a Pilsen resident and an industrial mainstay with bands such as Pigface, Nine Inch Nails and Killing Joke, recorded with Albini for years. “We would argue,” he said. “He didn’t like the idea that Pigface was touring in a bus. He would say, ‘Oh, what a bunch of (expletive) rock stars!’ And I would go, “Steve, there are 16 of us! What would you want us to do — tour in five mini-vans?

“I remember in Minnesota, coming back from one of his favorite studios, he agreed to drive me to the airport and we argued music for so long that he drove 40 minutes past the airport and I missed my flight. Things were often very cut and dry to Steve, but always centered on the glorious movement of sound. Whatever personal, spiritual, creative problems he might have had, he worked hard to clear them out to get you your sound.”

Indeed, of all the legendary tales of Steve Albini, one of the best is the long letter that he wrote to Nirvana before recording “In Utero,” to lay out his philosophy and expectations:

“I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. … I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. … I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it’s worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There’s no (expletive) way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

Nirvana, eager to retain a shred of indie cred after becoming the biggest band in the world, was a natural fit with Albini. The problem was, after they made “In Utero,” the record company hated its sound; the band itself began airing doubts. And so, before release, changes were made. Moreover, Albini’s reputation as a pedantic, prickly and iconoclastic collaborator, quick to question someone’s ideology, caught up to him.

He told interviewers major labels didn’t want to work with him; critics accused him of selling out by working with them at all, then being fast to complain if it went badly.

But as goofy as it sounds now, since the concept has lost its meaning: He never could sell out. Not the way we assume artists inevitably do. He retained a pure righteous punk intention, except when such astringent logic failed. Talking about his younger, uncompromising self, he gave himself little room to hide. Last year he told the Guardian newspaper: “The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted — excuse my behavior.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time .”

In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Armisen said that just the other day Albini had texted him about cymbals. He didn’t get cymbals: “Like I can tell the difference between this one and that one but if I’m honest they both sound like cymbals and I don’t care.”

Armisen concluded: “I always loved hearing him say ‘I don’t care.’”

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