If you were planning to cue something up for an LSD trip, save the dose. Veradas already drill straight into your skull, no chemicals required.
The Portland trio’s debut single “Hud Money” lands May 8th via Dipterid Records, ahead of their first full-length “Universal Relays“.
The title is a thinly-veiled nod to Mudhoney, and you can hear it in the fuzzed riffs and pummeling drums, but Veradas push the song into different territory by stacking sinister harmonies and layered guitar effects until it sits closer to grunge-gaze than straight grunge. There’s King Gizzard and Osees in the bones, with Jane’s Addiction and Nirvana echoes coming through.
“Universal Relays” runs ten songs deep and feeds off shoegaze, jazz, funk, 1990s grunge and alt-rock, Kraut rock, American psych, the madness of the Aussies, and the abandonment of the Pacific Northwest. The Everly Brothers are in there too, somewhere.
“We’ll take on anything. We’re not afraid to let any genre influence us. Some of these songs are inspired by the most random things, but they still end up sounding like us,” says guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist Travis Ferguson.
The lyrics on “Hud Money” come from a darker place than the title’s wink. Ferguson writes from the perspective of someone being slowly digested by their phone:
I am just a sentimental reject
Cursed of form and not to become effect
why
there’s some form of universal relays
While I myself am lost among the egress
From Ferguson’s lyric notebook. Late-night pages, half-thoughts, the residue around the song:
This is communication from the people.
Words and ideas follow you wherever you go. Without mercy or care. Bending your will ever so slightly, so gently. Allowing just enough time to breathe.
I used to breathe. More often than not. Cursed of form. It’s not new, I mean, I was younger then. A time of three dimensions, of bleeding, of finding out. Our world existed. Yet the slumber came creeping.
The distraction farm is as fertile as ever and more than happy to feed us an endless supply of next please. Proliferation of the disposable, and oh, do we want more, can’t get enough. [and repeat]
It’s not new. They’ve always been there in one way or another. Constantly dreaming. I wake up drunk with the thought I should have stayed in bed. Tired of the constant noise. It’s loud in all the wrong ways.
I am just a sentimental reject. Cursed of form. Not to become effect.
Fields colliding. Resonance, harmony, discord, destruction, creation. Sound, not just a sound, but the sound of existing. As a way of being. A ticket to get the world actively dreaming.
Fall out,
This is communication.
All eyes front if you want to be heard.
“In the era I grew up in, I’ve seen how the digital world has driven a new stage of human evolution,” Ferguson says of the lyrics. “These lyrics come from the frustration, fear, anxiety, and addiction of the digital age. We all get pulled into the screens. It’s the new norm.”
Veradas play their Portland release show on May 8th at The Six Below Midnight, then Funhouse in Seattle on May 31st, and Holocene back in Portland on June 3rd.
Catch the band live at the following stops:
May 8th // Portland, OR // The Six
May 31st // Seattle, WA // El Corazon
June 3rd // Portland, OR // Holocene
July 8th // Astoria, OR // Xanadu Astoria
July 9th // Olympia, WA // McCoy’s Tavern
July 10th // Portland, OR // Bunk Bar
July 11th // Eugene, OR // John Henry’s
July 12th // Portland, OR // Music Millennium
July 23rd // Seattle, WA // Chop Suey
🔔 IDIOTEQ is ad-free, independent, and runs on one person’s time. If you want it to stay that way: DONATE via PayPal 𝗈𝗋 SUPPORT via Patreon.
Stay connected via Newsletter · Instagram · Facebook · X (Twitter) · Threads · Bluesky · Messenger · WhatsApp.
