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London-based quartet Veronica Falls are indie pop at its finest, with a sprinkling of vintage punk and surfer rock for good measure. If you haven’t heard of them, then the time is definitely now for you to get to know them. Releasing their debut offering, the self-titled 12-track LP is an energetic seventies throwback. Do you remember what it felt like when Blondie first came on the scene? With a similar sound, but with a less-than-pop approach, this band have the potential to draw the same type of audience, but instead of pink paint and scrunchies they replace it with black hair dye and piercings.
Delicately brash, opening cut ‘Found Love In A Graveyard‘ is a real get-under-your-skin moment. With some seriously hard strumming, combined with Roxanne Clifford’s innocent yet eerie vocals - “She was my ghost/ I know she needed me the most/ But we’re not alone/ We were living in a funeral home,” it’s the opening track every album strives for - thought provoking and undeniably catchy. Uplifting, even though the title would suggest different, ‘Misery‘ is the moment when dancing around your kitchen whilst doing the dishes becomes cool again. Expressing her addiction to misery, Clifford adapts a surfer punk type of approach, similar to that of The Drums, to her vocal execution. Upbeat and unquestionably cheery, life seems more beautiful with this song in it, even if the lyrics are as far away from happiness as humanly possible.
Keeping with the echoing vocals and speedy guitars, ‘The Box‘ hears the band throw down some typically classic indie pop with an early demo feel to it, while the harder cut ‘Bad Feeling‘ oozes vocal pushiness with a rage element to it that has it sounding like something taken from a Quentin Tarantino movie.
The elements that make up the debut album from Veronica Falls include mid to fast tempo guitars and drums, chant heavy echoing vocals, and song titles that will have you in hysterics while actually leaving you to think about what they mean for a second - ‘Beachy Head‘ and ‘Right Side Of My Brain’. Constantly upbeat with a mish-mash of subject matters, this album is femme-fatale indie pop with more oxymoron song descriptions than one knows what to do with. Two thumbs up.
