Struggling to pin down Veronica Falls' sound, an interviewer recently told frontwoman Roxanne Clifford, "You know, you aren't twee." To which she replied, with exaggerated enthusiasm and perfect comedic timing, "Thanks!" It's easy to understand why people were quick to tack ready made labels onto Veronica Falls' sound when they first appeared on the indie pop scene several years ago. There's something familiar and retro-leaning about the London-based quartet-- a band daring to jangle in the long shadow of C86, copping a moody pose that's equally indebted to Morrissey and the Jesus and Mary Chain. But since their earliest singles, Veronica Falls seem to have figured out the deceptively simple, age-old secret to transcending influences: They just keep writing really good songs.
If people need to put a label on Veronica Falls' sound, Clifford told me when I interviewed her last year that she prefers the phrase "horror rock"-- a nod to her idol, garage rock pioneer Roky Erickson. (His band, cult favorites the 13th Floor Elevators, drew lyrical inspiration from old slasher flicks.) Veronica Falls released a sunny, serviceable cover of Erickson's "Starry Eyes" shortly after they formed in 2009, but it was on their excellent self-titled debut that they really came into the term. From the magnificently spooky "Found Love in a Graveyard" to the abrasive, zombified surf rock of "Beachy Head" (an ode to a craggy, coastline cliff in Sussex infamous for its suicides), a thematic chill ran throughout the album. And yet, Veronica Falls had a restraint and tasteful balance you don't often hear on debut records. They knew how to push their goth impulses just enough to be devotedly macabre, but not so far that their smartly arranged songs drowned in kitschy gimmicks. Even their most melodramatic and fantastical tracks like "Graveyard" were still grounded by relatable, down-to-earth emotions.
This remains true on the band's second album, Waiting for Something to Happen, which is not a huge departure from the debut but instead a showcase for subtle, wise tune-ups in the band's machinery. The chemistry between Clifford and James Hoare's dueling lead guitars is still strong, and the band's signature multi-part harmonies are as lush as they've ever been. Perhaps the most noticeable change is that Waiting feels like a warmer record. True to its "horror rock" ethos, the harmonies on Veronica Falls sometimes sounded like the work of an undead 60s girl group, but here, everybody sounds like they've got a little more color in their cheeks. Waiting still broods with the intensity of teenage love poems, but the approach here is more Romantic than Gothic. These aren't songs about heartbreak caused by ghosts, spirits, or dead poets; they're about the more ordinary variety of heartbreak between real, live people.
As the current rosters of labels like Slumberland and Captured Tracks attest, Veronica Falls aren't the only jangly, guitar-driven band out there that can write a memorable pop hook. What sets them at the head of the pack isn't so much their songwriting chops (though they've definitely got them) as it is the lush, full-screen scope of their sound. This atmosphere sounds fully realized on Waiting for Something to Happen, which was recorded mostly without overdubs and with all four band members playing live in the studio. (Clifford says they scrapped some early demos because they "didn't like how it sounded when we started tracking everything individually.") You can tell Veronica Falls approach the interplay between guitars, bass and drums as carefully as they do their vocal harmonies, and that sense of interlocking group energy gives their sound a roughness, but also fullness and a warmth. You can hear it on the album's most melancholy moment, "Falling Out": Clifford paints a solitary scene of "standing in the headlights, falling in the snow," but as her bandmates' instruments and voices join hers in the chorus, that collective energy makes her begin to sound slightly resilient, as if bolstered by the fact that she's no longer alone.
"Everybody's changing, I remain the same," Clifford sings on "Everybody's Changing", a side B highlight with a chiming melody that sounds like a long lost Teenage Fanclub tune. Whether slyly intentional or not, its title lyric beats the haters to the punch: Veronica Falls haven't changed much in the year-and-a-half since their debut. If you were expecting a bounding artistic leap forward on Waiting, or standalone tracks as immediate and memorable as "Bad Feeling" and "Graveyard", you might be slightly disappointed that their second record doesn't stray much from their established blueprint. But taken apart from the high expectations set by their debut, Waiting is another strong collection of guitar pop gems from a band quickly proving itself to be a better, more elusive quantity than any easy genre tag might suggest.
