Exclusive Album Stream: Veronica Falls – Veronica Falls

The best and most interesting journalism comes from petty in-fights over the merits of any given indie band, right? That’s what you all want to read. That is useful to society. So I’m braced for your praise to rain down upon me as I take issue with this one column, of many, by Paul Lester. First off, Lester, the B-side ‘Starry Eyes’ was a cover of a song by 13th Floor Elevators’ Roky Erickson. Ha! It’s almost as if you preview several new bands a week and don’t have to time to research this stuff! Splutter, snort.

Okay, more importantly: we need to set the record straight on Veronica Falls (and having done so, drop the needle). Lester and his ilk’s complaints are these:

1. The Band is derivative (of C86, spooky post-punk, etc.)

2. The Sound is dilute (a “neutered and bled” Pixies, a “kintergarten” Siouxsie, and other synonyms for wet blanketry)

TLOBF’s modest counterproposals, if you’ll have them:

Lest we forget, the word “derivative” is ambiguous. On the one hand it describes that music which is so similar to another artist’s – or such an uninspiring amalgam of several – that it might as well have not existed. (My Illustrated Dictionary of Music Snark has a picture of Duffy, here, though this may vary according to edition.) Its other meaning bears more relation to its stem: music that derives, or originates, from the gene pool of pre-existing influences. We could throw Yuck between the two for hours, but to condemn Veronica Falls for sounding a bit eighties feels like picking on the ginger kid. They’ve one foot in Glasgow, one in London, and it’s just their genetics.

The blood is strong and mixed, the offspring ruddy. There’s nothing wimpy about the guttural clamour that raises ‘Found Love In A Graveyard’ from its earthen bed: this, one of their earliest tracks, is primed with a dirt and a darkness that even Roxanne Clifford’s schoolgirl lilt can’t shake. All the acidity of Orange Juice and less of the sugar. Even if the rest of the album were mediocre, this would carry it.

Of course, it needn’t. We see that deathly undercurrent again in ‘The Fountain’, ‘Bad Feeling’ and the surf-rock froth and effervescence of ‘Beachy Head’. But still other tracks rest somewhere in the sun-lit shallows: ‘Right Side of my Brain’, ‘Misery’, ‘Stephen’, ‘The Box’, ‘Wedding Day’ and the sublimely pretty ‘Veronica Falls’ itself. At times the band seems to owe more to flowery 60s folk than later decades: the harmonies are multi-layered and dust-mote soft, the guitar lines more evocative of The Byrds than Pam Berry. But still, that balls-to the-wall quality pervades – and is arguably the key to how very fresh and thrilling this band can be. The drums, man – on ‘Come on Over’ they wait about 43 seconds till they jump you. Thum-pak-thum-oak-thum-pak-thum-pak, and the vocals resolutely buttery: “hey, come on over, crimson and clover / I touch your shoulder, until it’s over, oh for ever, come on over / come on over”. It’s a teenage stream-of-unconsciousness, and it’s sure persuasive.

Who knows. Maybe it’s fair that those who experienced the C86 wave firsthand will find Veronica Falls lacklustre by comparison. And maybe it’s equally fair to propose that the power of nostalgia will bear heavily on their opinions. (Many of us will probably feel much the same in twenty years: you’ll find us calling The Next Generic Young Upstarts “a milk-fed Veronica Falls” as we send the cycle reeling on.)

So, if we may shed all context for a minute: oh, but this band is incredible. Notice yet how every beat hosts a tambourine? It’s a jingle-bell pulse running the length of these twelve songs. Every song sounding like the merriest Christmas: that’s distinctive. The slightly bent notes in the otherwise immaculate pop peach of ‘Misery’: that’s distinctive. The way the vaguest, grodiest suggestion of the ‘Graveyard’ riff at the sound-check can give you chills: yes, that’s distinctive enough.

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