Veronica Falls

Possibly a guilty pleasure, but even so, a late year highlight, this debut album from London's Veronica Falls...named, I think, after a place, not a clumsy Archie character. Anyway, my review, which doesn't begin to convey how much fun this record it, ran late last week at Blurt.

Veronica Falls
Veronica Falls
(Slumberland)


Had enough of drone-y, dissonant, reverb-drenched R ‘N R? Too bad. It's time to suck it up and make room for one more band with bright-and-shadows harmonies, rackety riffs and a thing for guitar effects. Veronica Falls, out of London, runs way ahead of the Pains-of-Being-Dum-as-a-Vivian Girl pack with a bittersweet debut. They nod to all the usual influences - Jesus & Mary Chain, VU, Orange Juice etc. - but in fresh and unaffected ways. "Found Love in a Graveyard" may explore a nexus of death and teen love as old as, say, Wayne Cochran's "The Last Kiss," but it sounds unencumbered by history, as if these four had just cottoned onto the scary idea of mortality.

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