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Veruca Salt.
"This tour just kind of dropped in my lap," says Veruca Salt's Louise Post. "I wasn't planning on touring for a while, and then our promoter in Australia called up and invited us back over. And it just seemed like the perfect thing to do, because the last tour I did was in Australia. It's sort of a bookend for a really healing period for me. I'm in a healthier and happier headspace. I'm just really excited to come back and tour!"
While the tour doesn't include a stop in Adelaide, it will include a spot at the Falls Festival. When I ask Louise Post what she's been doing in preparation, it seems she's been busy looking for a temporary replacement for bassist Mareea Paterson. "She's getting surgery, so I called in a former bass player of mine and she was going to do it, but now she has to get foot surgery," she says. "So it's been this really strange thing of like all the female bass players having to go in for surgery!
"Prior to that, I spent the year having a lot of self time, doing a lot of healing," she reveals. "Doing a lot of meditation, and some yoga, and going out hiking in the mountains, and spending time outdoors, and spending time with family. And then I just sort of picked up with music because that's what I do and that's what makes me happiest. I've been really excited lately to get back into the studio, and we've been talking to a couple of labels. I've reconnected with my managers, and I have a producer lined up, and I've been doing a lot of demos. I'm really excited to make the fourth Veruca Salt record. So that's what's been going on, and I'm hoping to get back in the studio in February, after this tour."
In the meantime, Post has been writing in anticipation of entering the studio, although "as of yet its personality is to be discovered". However she plans to play a few of the new songs on the upcoming tour.
2000's 'Resolver' was an extremely angry album. It was borne of a bitter breakup between Post and former band-mate Nina Gordon, and also followed the end of a relationship between Post and Dave Grohl. As a result, Post is now the only original member of the band left and around that time, the rumour mill went into overdrive. "Yeah, I heard a lot of stuff that isn't true. The rumours got pretty crazy. Basically there were a few events that made it final, made it easy for us to split up. But I think that we really needed to split up because we were so close. Two people can only sustain that closeness for so long, unless they're married. We used to joke that we had everything but the ring, but we really had to go our different directions and live our own lives. It's really clear to me, in hindsight. And we needed some drama to make us split up because we didn't know how else to break up. We're friends now."
It's surprising to hear, given the ugliness of the rumours. "Yeah, not great friends, but we keep in touch, and we've sort of made peace with the past. We'll always love each other. It's really clear that there's a lot of love there. So that's a really nice thing to have had come to pass, making peace with Nina. And I ran into Stacy [Jones], our old drummer, a couple of months ago at a Juliana Hatfield concert and we had this really loving reunion. It was awesome."
A lot of time has passed since then. "I'm not in that headspace anymore," says Post. "I had a lot I had to say during that time, I'd just gone through some big break-ups. I'm a lot happier now. The songs I'm writing are a lot more hopeful and more universal themes. I may be a little less narcissistic. I don't have as much rage as I did then.
"I don't imagine it will be a shallow record; I really can't go down that road, even if I wanted to. There's no point in making music that's shallow, in my opinion. I end up just writing what I feel, and what I'm going through, and just reflecting the world around me. It ends up being a document of life. So I think this time around, I'm definitely not going through the same shit. I worked through a lot of that, and now I'm elsewhere. I've yet to see what's going to really come out of that. I just feel a lot more positive, and would like to make a positive record."
So at least lyrically, the material will be softer, given Post's current mindset. But how about the sound? "Oh, monster rock, you know?" she laughs. "But I can't imagine what my sound will change into. It's hard for me to ever define what it sounds like, anyway... But I think it will just be a development upon 'Resolver' and the Veruca Salt records before that. You know, I love pop, and I always have, and I love epic monster rock, too. So that's usually what comes out of me, a mixture of those two things. And some soft songs, because a record isn't complete without them."
Eddie Chan
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Veruca Salt headline The Falls Festival over New Years in Lorne and Tasmania.
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