Producer Brad Wood shot Veruca Salt’s American Thighs through an evocative layer of mid-fi indie gauze,
and the result was arguably the strongest debut album since Wood’s production
of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville the
year before. However, gnarly monsters like “All Hail Me”, “Victrola”, and the
definitive hit “Seether” suggested that Veruca Salt might be happier to Rock
without the indie part (so did the disc’s AC/DC-referencing title).
Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Steve Lack, and Jim Shapiro made
good on that threat with Eight Arms to
Hold You, a ROCK album as full throttle as any by the Young Brothers. With
A-bomb-force production from Bob Rock—who’d worked with such hairspray
enthusiasts as Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, David
Lee Roth, and Aerosmith—tracks such
as “Straight”, “Volcano Girls”, the absolutely killer “Don’t Make Me Prove It”, and
“Shutterbug” hit harder than anything on American
Thighs. Even poppier numbers such as “With David Bowie” and ballads such as
the rapturous “Benjamin” hit harder than the mass of Veruca Salt’s first album.
Consequently, Veruca Salt’s recordings lost a good deal of their atmospheric
allure, but they gained a lot of power, though in the cases of some of the
heavier numbers, that power could get a bit much.
With a refreshingly quiet mastering job, UMe’s new vinyl edition
of Eight Arms to Hold You tones down
the overwhelming noise a bit, smoothing out Bob Rock’s excesses pleasingly. The
vinyl arrives in two formats: 120-gram black and 180-gram gold (which is the
one I received for review). Both editions include the bonus track “Good Disaster”,
a “B-side” on the original “Volcano Girls” single. Whenever I’d listen to my Eight Arms CD, I’d always picture “Benjamin”
as the last track on Side A and “Shutterbug” as the first one on side B (yes,
yes—I had a real hard time acclimating to the CD age), but the presence of “Good
Disaster” bumps “Shutterbug” to the end of side A for whatever that’s worth. The
bonus track serves as a gentle epilogue to the epic “Earthcrosser” in a
similar manner to the way “Sleeping Where I Want” followed “25” on American Thighs. The CD booklet is
converted to a large insert with band photos on one side and lyrics on the
other, though the purple and gold scheme of the booklet lyrics are converted to
straight B&W for this vinyl release.
Apparently, this is not the first time Eight Arms to Hold You was available on vinyl, though I’m sure its
nineties incarnation was quite a rarity. While issuing the digital recordings
of the nineties on vinyl is technically
excessive and unnecessary, I still love having those great old CDs are being
converted to this more textural format, and I’m glad that Eights Arms to Hold You has been given the opportunity to take part
in this fun trend.
