From: Chicago, Illinois

Active: Veruca Salt (original lineup), 1994–1997, 2014–2015; Nina Gordon, 2000–2006

I first heard them: when Live 105 started playing “Seether”

Sound: “Rock on with your frock on” was something Nina said during her first stint with Veruca Salt.  It applies to the band more than to her solo work, a lot of which is more in the “rock on with your Sarah Maclachlan records on” vein.

During their second stint as a going concern, Veruca Salt adopted a different philosophy from that of the band’s first incarnation.  Back in the day, Nina wrote and sang half the songs, and Louise wrote and sang the other half.  I didn’t hate Louise’s half of Eight Arms to Hold You, but I was a bigger fan of Nina’s songwriting and vocals by orders of magnitude.  Then they split up, and Nina tried to become a Soft Rock Star while Louise churned out yowling embarrassments.  The better part of two decades later, they finally put the band back together, as all ’90s bands with living members did around that time⁠—but this time, they did not split up the songwriting chores.  All fourteen songs on their 2015 album Ghost Notes are co-written and co-sung.  Louise is still not much of a vocalist, but the second half of that album is good enough that (to my surprise!) it managed to crack my little pantheon.  (Also, while I normally don’t care about lyrics, the lyrics of the second half of the record spoke to me in a big way at the time, and almost certainly made the difference in landing Ghost Notes its spot.)

Listening station: Here are three songs from that album, plus the two songs that Veruca Salt once got onto my chart.

		“Empty Bottle” (2015)
		“I’m Telling You Now” (2015)
		“Lost to Me” (2015)
		“Seether” (1994)
		“Shimmer Like a Girl” (1996)