VERO - UNSOOTHING INTERIOR Vinyl LP
On their debut album ‘Unsoothing Interior’, Stockholm’s Vero reflect the nature of life itself. Their songs prioritise feeling over perfectionism – what feels, or sounds, best – creating a record that tumbles through its contents with a sense of unpredictability, excitement and curiosity. “We don’t want to be super musicians; we want to write the best fucking songs and just have the best energy and show people that we’re having fun,” explains singer and bassist Julia Boman. “We don’t want to be a perfect band, in that sense.”
Fun has always been at the heart of Vero’s story, which began when guitarist Clara Gyökeres walked up to Boman and asked if she wanted to start a club night together. With the bassist’s school friend Amanda Eddestål, also now on guitar, they started DJing as a trio before eventually deciding it would be more enjoyable to play their own music rather than other artists’ and formed the band. “We DJed old disco music, but all three of us were going to rock concerts and loved rock music,” Boman says. “We were like, ‘We’ve all made music in some way before so we should start playing together instead’.”
Voracious music lovers, at first they struggled to settle on one sound, purely because they wanted to try their hand at “every genre possible”. But during the making of their 2020 EP ‘Heaven On Earth’, they shifted from synthesised sounds to using guitars and real drums, and had an epiphany.
“Synthesisers are so controlled,” Boman explains. “You have to really be like, ‘Oh, that’s not the right tune’, but when you’re playing the guitar, it can sound pretty chaotic. When we write now, we don’t have much control. We’re not very picky about it.”
“We want to be able to play everything live as it sounds,” adds Gyökeres. “That just really changed the sound of the band too.”
It’s an approach that’s stuck with them into ‘Unsoothing Interior’, an album full of raw guitar riffs that spin and swirl and fizz, and evoke the spirit of artists like Sonic Youth, Garbage and Pixies (lyrically, it boasts a sardonic wit in the same vein as Elastica). On the recent single ‘BEG!’, they match the anger in the band’s lyrics, building from something lowkey to searing walls of sound. At other times, as on ‘Cupid’, they clash discordantly, creating a sense of instability and chaos. “Instead of it being nice, it’s OK for it to be weird, and it’s good if people don’t like it too,” Gyökeres says. “This is the core of us now, and it feels really good to get to do that now.”
Bold and brilliant, ‘Unsoothing Interior’ is the album Vero say they’ve always dreamt of making. But, notes Gyökeres, it’s “just one of the albums we’ve always wanted to make. There are plenty – this is just the starting point”.
Fun has always been at the heart of Vero’s story, which began when guitarist Clara Gyökeres walked up to Boman and asked if she wanted to start a club night together. With the bassist’s school friend Amanda Eddestål, also now on guitar, they started DJing as a trio before eventually deciding it would be more enjoyable to play their own music rather than other artists’ and formed the band. “We DJed old disco music, but all three of us were going to rock concerts and loved rock music,” Boman says. “We were like, ‘We’ve all made music in some way before so we should start playing together instead’.”
Voracious music lovers, at first they struggled to settle on one sound, purely because they wanted to try their hand at “every genre possible”. But during the making of their 2020 EP ‘Heaven On Earth’, they shifted from synthesised sounds to using guitars and real drums, and had an epiphany.
“Synthesisers are so controlled,” Boman explains. “You have to really be like, ‘Oh, that’s not the right tune’, but when you’re playing the guitar, it can sound pretty chaotic. When we write now, we don’t have much control. We’re not very picky about it.”
“We want to be able to play everything live as it sounds,” adds Gyökeres. “That just really changed the sound of the band too.”
It’s an approach that’s stuck with them into ‘Unsoothing Interior’, an album full of raw guitar riffs that spin and swirl and fizz, and evoke the spirit of artists like Sonic Youth, Garbage and Pixies (lyrically, it boasts a sardonic wit in the same vein as Elastica). On the recent single ‘BEG!’, they match the anger in the band’s lyrics, building from something lowkey to searing walls of sound. At other times, as on ‘Cupid’, they clash discordantly, creating a sense of instability and chaos. “Instead of it being nice, it’s OK for it to be weird, and it’s good if people don’t like it too,” Gyökeres says. “This is the core of us now, and it feels really good to get to do that now.”
Bold and brilliant, ‘Unsoothing Interior’ is the album Vero say they’ve always dreamt of making. But, notes Gyökeres, it’s “just one of the albums we’ve always wanted to make. There are plenty – this is just the starting point”.