Nina Gordon was born on November 14, 1967. As a singer, guitarist and co-founder of Veruca Salt, she wrote and sang “Seether,” the breakthrough single from the band’s 1994 debut, American Thighs. Her career also took her into solo pop recordings before she returned to the band and the vocal partnership that had helped define its first records.
That partnership began in Chicago in 1992, through a friendship that reached back to Gordon’s childhood. Actress Lili Taylor, whom she knew from summer theater camp, introduced her to Louise Post. Both women sang, played guitar and wrote songs; Gordon’s brother Jim Shapiro joined on drums, with Steve Lack on bass. Gordon and Post generally wrote separately, each taking the lead vocal on her own material and supporting the other’s songs with backing vocals. Their shared sound grew from two distinct writers.
Brad Wood produced American Thighs, and Gordon supplied another lead single, “Volcano Girls,” for the Bob Rock-produced Eight Arms to Hold You in 1997. The song even reached back to “Seether” through a playful reference to the Beatles’ “Glass Onion.” In a 1997 Chicago Sun-Times interview, Gordon told Jae-Ha Kim she was surprised more people hadn’t caught the Beatles connection. That pop fandom was part of her writing even as the band moved toward a heavier guitar sound.
Gordon left Veruca Salt in 1998 after her relationship with Post broke down. Her solo debut, Tonight and the Rest of My Life, followed in 2000, with Rock producing again. The album moved toward adult alternative pop, and its title song reached pop and adult contemporary radio. Working under her own name gave Gordon another setting for the melodies she had brought to the band.
Making the follow-up meant deciding that a finished album wasn’t necessarily the right album. Gordon recorded with Ethan Johns in 2004, then shelved the album. “It was just really slow and really sad,” she told Illinois Entertainer in 2006. With some distance from the sessions, she felt it no longer expressed what she wanted to say after several years between releases. She called Rock, tracked a new set of songs in less than a week, and spent another month recording vocals and overdubs at his Maui studio. The result was her second solo album, Bleeding Heart Graffiti, released in 2006. Gordon also described a shift in her lyrics: she was becoming more comfortable stating her feelings directly, instead of using the cryptic language she had favored in Veruca Salt.
Her friendship with Post recovered before their musical partnership did. Emails about motherhood helped them reconnect, and the original four musicians eventually played together again. Gordon told Illinois Entertainer in 2015 that she had initially imagined a reunion show built around playing American Thighs from beginning to end. Once they started rehearsing, both women began writing. The reunion became a reason to make another record.
Ghost Notes arrived in 2015, with Wood returning as producer. One decisive moment had come when Post brought in “Alternica,” the song that would close the album. Gordon recalled being so moved by it that she recognized they had new records to make together. She, Post and Shapiro worked on the song in her living room, singing in harmony as the album began to take shape.
