Track x Track: Veruca Moon - 'Veruca Moon' EP

Image credit: Robin Bottrell

Indie alt-folk singer-songwriter Veruca Moon and her band certainly made their mark on the W.A. music scene in 2023, gracing stages including Nannup Music Festival, WAMFest and RTRFM Winter Music Festival, while also releasing a couple of singles that showcase their knack for writing catchy and melodic yet exploratory compositions and feature storytelling lyrics that detail emotionally relatable scenarios.

Now Veruca Moon has released their self-titled EP, a record that ranges from smokey blues sounds to triumphant, driving indie rock vibes. Veruca explains “This EP has been a learning process as much as it has been a creative one. Sounds and ideas I had at the start of making it have changed drastically in a great way with the guidance of our producer, and I’m so proud of how it’s turned out. I just aimed to put together a small compilation of my own favourites, and to put it out there to give people a sense of my music”.

Featuring five tracks, the Veruca Moon EP includes lead single About You, a cut that saw backing vocals from some of Veruca’s talented friends including Grace Newton-Wordsworth (Joan and The Giants), Stacey Ann, Angie Colman and Georgina Cramond (Ribs). Offering a stripped back alternative take, the EP also features a live acoustic version, recorded at fave Leederville destination, Vinyl Cafe.

To celebrate the EP’s release, Veruca was kind enough to tell us the story behind each track on the record - have a listen and get to know!

War

I was mucking around on GarageBand years ago with a synth beat to get a repetitive drone feeling to some chords. I remember taking some inspiration from the song ‘Ooh la la’ by Goldfrapp. I wrote some lyrics around the cycle of my repeated patterns with anxiety and fight/flight mode - I was always ending up back at the same place over and over in a continuous loop of fear/avoidance and didn’t know how to get out of it. Years later when I was playing live gigs I pulled it out of the wood works to make it achievable live, and this creepy/ominous/broody version came to life in the form of a full band. While recording it we all just threw shit at the wall to see what stuck, basing it entirely on ‘feeling it out’ - the end result is basically a production version of the atmosphere we try to create when playing it live.

Let Me Go

This is an old song that has changed dramatically from the way I first wrote it back in 2017. I didn’t know how to take it from the blues/folk/almost barbershop version I made originally, but having the band helped me lean it towards this emotional tone and now it’s got this alt-country feel which I don’t mind at all. The recorded track is pure and simple - just focused around the chords and lyrics - there’s no fancy additions to this one and I like that. It’s an introspective song about questioning why you find yourself ruminating over the same person who is really giving you nothing in return. I was hung up on someone for a while and couldn’t decipher if they felt the same and I was trying to untangle that confusion. The subject isn’t really relevant to me now but I still get to connect with that feeling when we play it and I really love this song - it’s one I had felt so proud of having created at the time.

About You

About You’ was kind of a tongue-in-cheek way to respond to a terrible relationship that I actually had a really hard time processing the grief of - I think it was more during the anger phase of healing through it, but the experience itself was extremely painful. The song being so upbeat to start with allowed me to put the energy somewhere it belongs, before it crescendos into a more cathartic outpour of feelings and just an acceptance of things leaving me so messed up but ultimately better off.

Winter Solstice

This song was a really therapeutic song to write when I was in the midst of a breakup. I’d been pulling out all the tools to find a sense of safety by myself during a very difficult period. I almost wasn’t going to add it to our setlist but I got lots of positive responses and it’s one of my favourites now - the band helped bring this to life in a huge way. Recording it, we just experimented with different guitar tones and focused a lot on dynamics. We tried to bring a little bit of a 90’s feel to this track cause it seemed like the right vibe. It still makes me feel empowered and capable every time we play it.

About You (Acoustic - Live at The Vinyl Cafe)

We had the opportunity to record live with our producer in front of an audience at Vinyl Cafe last year, so we chose to do the acoustic version of About You that we usually perform as a duo.

I get torn between both versions (full band and acoustic) because they both let me play out the emotions behind the lyrics. This version is close to me cause it feels as personal and intimate as it is. Something about the different key/folk sound is how I like to write all my songs when I first work them out too, so including this one in the EP was a good chance to show both sides of the same coin.

          - Veruca Moon, February 2024

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