Life Imitates Art For Veruca Salt

Alt-rock survivors Veruca Salt take their name, from Roald Dahl's Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, and one of its thoroughly 'spoilt' children. In 1992, in Chicago, founding songwriters of the band - guitarist/vocalists Louise Post and Nina Gordon - were in Gordon's room, leafing through books. "[Nina] brought up that name, and we both looked at each other, and then we said, 'Maybe...'," recounts Post. "I don't remember a moment in which we actually said, 'This is it!'"

In recent years, this name - one that has defined Post's adult life - has grown even-closer to home. Her seven-year-old daughter, Lila, recently became obsessed with both Dahl's book and the 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. And, at times, Post has noticed unnerving parallels between her daughter and the character.

"I've felt, many times, that the joke of the universe is on me; that I've manifested this by naming my band Veruca Salt," Post laughs. "In these moments, I feel like I've spawned Veruca Salt incarnate, and I feel doomed. But that's only sometimes. Other times, she has her very charming, very evolved moments. She said to me the other day: 'I think that Veruca Salt's father is very bad at parenting. He gives her everything she wants, and then she doesn't even appreciate it'."

Post is speaking from her home in Los Angeles, lying on her bed next to her golden retriever, Prince. Lila named the dog on the one-year anniversary of the death of Prince, but it was a pure coincidence. Post's daughter didn't know of Prince, the musician, nor what he meant in her mother's life. "I went to see the Controversy tour when I was a freshman in high-school, and saw every concert when he came through [St Louis] up until Sign O' The Times," Post remembers. "I had every LP and 12-inch. I was obsessed with him, I was in love with him, I wanted to be with him, I wanted to be him. I was in a band in high-school that did Prince covers, Vanity 6 covers, Apollonia 6 covers. I was 17 when Purple Rain came out. He figured heavily into my life. Prince was my punk rock. I wasn't listening to Black Flag and Circle Jerks, I was listening to Prince."

Post started writing her own songs at 20 and formed Veruca Salt at 25. They've since released five albums and are about to start working on their sixth; hoping to make a "really beautiful… quieter record". "We don't, necessarily, want to make a big rock record," Post says. "We love being in a rock band, we love playing loud rock... [but] I think we're at a point where we're like, 'Do we have to have bleeding eardrums every time?'"

The album will follow up 2016's Ghost Notes, the first record for the original line-up of Post, Gordon, drummer Jim Shapiro and bassist Steve Lack since 1997's Bob Rock-produced Eight Arms To Hold You. Post had spent years keeping Veruca Salt alive as the sole original member; now, the band jokingly refers to that time as "Veruca Starship", referencing Jefferson Airplane's mutation into Jefferson Starship in the 1970s.

The final days of Veruca Salt's initial time together came in Australia on a 1997 tour. The band have a "rich history" in here -since their buzzy, fuzzy single Seether landed at #6 on 1994 triple j Hottest 100 - including an end-of-the-road show in Melbourne where a drunken Post publicly railed against the boyfriend who'd dumped her for a movie star (Dave Grohl! Winona Ryder!), to her bandmates' chagrin.

"We did have a big fight on stage in Melbourne," Post says. "I just found out my boyfriend at the time was cheating on me, so I was just publicly falling apart all over Australian stages. Then, we went back to the States, and then Nina and I fell out, and went our separate ways. Despite all of that, I have only fond associations with Australia. Even that tour: it was crazy, it was wild, it was dramatic. The time that was tough to go back to Melbourne was when I was going back without Nina, which brought a lot of pain. But, now, going back to Melbourne, with Nina by my side, it's triumphant and really fun. I guess I'd call it our victory lap."