Veruca Salt - Lodge Room Highland Park 2018

Veruca Salt brought their noisy, melodic alternative rock to Lodge Room in Highland Park, Los Angeles, on February 17, 2018. The intimate show came shortly after the band returned from an extensive Australian tour and offered fans a 23-song performance that reached across nearly the entire Veruca Salt catalog.

The Lodge Room was an ideal setting for the band. Located upstairs in a historic building in Highland Park, the relatively small room put the audience close to the musicians and allowed Veruca Salt's guitars to hit with considerably more force than they might in a larger theater. Lodge Room

The set opened with “Wolf,” followed by “Shimmer Like a Girl,” “The Museum of Broken Relationships,” and “Number One Blind.” Right away, the performance demonstrated the band's ability to combine heavy guitar riffs with catchy melodies and the distinctive vocal interplay between Louise Post and Nina Gordon.

The early portion continued with “Don't Make Me Prove It,” “Prince of Wales,” “The Gospel According to Saint Me,” “Forsythia,” and “Straight.” Much of the material came from Ghost Notes, the band's 2015 comeback album, while songs from American Thighs and Eight Arms to Hold You provided a direct connection to their 1990s peak.

“Benjamin,” “Empty Bottle,” and “Shutterbug” kept the momentum going before the band reached one of its biggest crowd moments with “Volcano Girls.” The song remains one of Veruca Salt's signature tracks, and its combination of distorted guitars and instantly recognizable melody was made for a packed club like Lodge Room.

The performance then moved through “Poetry Kit,” “Seether,” “Triage,” “I'm Taking Europe With Me,” and “Earthcrosser.” “Seether” was an especially important moment, representing the band's breakthrough and remaining the most frequently performed song in Veruca Salt's live history.

The encore featured “Fly,” “Sleeping Where I Want,” “The Morning Sad,” and “Spiderman '79.” Ending with “Spiderman '79” gave longtime fans another trip back to the band's early catalog and brought the 23-song performance to a satisfying conclusion.

What made the Highland Park concert particularly appealing was the combination of deep catalog material and the intimacy of the venue. Veruca Salt could still deliver the loud, guitar-heavy attack that made them such an important part of 1990s alternative rock, but the 2018 lineup also had the advantage of the reunited Post and Gordon partnership that had helped define the band's original sound.

For Veruca Salt fans, the Lodge Room show was an excellent snapshot of the band in the late 2010s: 23 songs, material from three major eras of their career, plenty of distortion, and all of the hooks that made the group such a memorable part of alternative rock. In a small Highland Park room, the songs sounded less like nostalgia and more like exactly what they had always been—a great live rock show.