Delivering carnal live performances that reflect the intensity of their gutsy songs, Veronica is rapidly gaining traction on New York City’s grunge music scene. Fronted by singer-songwriter Sofia Zarzuela, their debut EP Rottweiler is biting and blunt, documenting the love and lust of girlhood with no holding back.
“Blue Ribbon” is a brilliantly bold introduction to the project, immediately confronting listeners with a thumping beat and subtle harmonies while unearthing complex emotions surrounding the blurry line between platonic and romantic female relationships. “Do you know how long I’ve been thinking of you / Of course, all is forgiven / I’ve got a Ziploc bag of your hair still”; Zarzuela’s smooth voice abruptly descends into guttural screams as drummer Billy Hay’s cymbals crash down around us—forgiveness, perhaps, is more onerous than she’d like to admit. The rest of the track follows a similar structure, oscillating between light, clear vocals, and visceral cries eventually tied together by unrelenting percussion. With every shriek and every reference to the lingering homoeroticism of many teenage female friendships—“I miss wearing your clothes / I miss being girls with you”—“Blue Ribbon” wraps itself tighter and tighter around you, leaving you itching for more.
Dialing up the pop-punk, “Half Closed Doors” is fiercely energetic, with its fast tempo and fiery guitars reminiscent of Avril Lavigne and Hole. “Everything around you is falling to pieces / Blame it on me, I fucked up everything between us,” Zarzuela sings candidly, her voice matching the instrumentals’ fervor. “I don’t know where you start and where I end,” she admits at the end of the song—beneath the noise, there is a confessional aspect to “Half Closed Doors,” and indeed Rottweiler as a whole, which makes for a far more engaging listening experience as many of us can relate to being completely consumed by a relationship. The following track, “Tangerine,” also packs a zesty punch, with crashing drums and layers of powerful vocals held together by Joe Kerwin’s catchy bassline; Zarzuela describes the helplessness of watching someone take drugs, with damning lyrics like “You swore that you were getting clean” and “When you decide you wanna do that shit / There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Rottweiler’s second half opens with “Home For The Weekend,” providing a welcome change of pace as Veronica moves into more mellow territory. Zarzuela is accompanied by a much calmer guitar and softer beat, spotlighting her impressive vocal range as she switches from cathartic screams to delicate croons. A songwriter at heart, Zarzuela’s poppy take on garage rock incorporates clear storylines and brutal honesty. Lyrics are wistful, imbued with bittersweet fondness as she reflects on a past relationship: “When I swore that I’d love you, that I’d love you forever, I was telling the truth / You were my seventeen / You were my everything / You were a home to me.” It’s a dramatic shift from the earlier tracks, but doesn’t feel out of place—Zarzuela’s voice is still emotion-packed, reeling from the aftermath of three explosive songs as she shifts away from angst and towards acceptance.
“Pleasantville,” unsurprisingly, also starts a little gentler, a little more pleasant—grunge guitars and high-energy percussion are replaced with quieter strums and lilting vocals as Zarzuela reflects on painful dreams, maybe memories, and asks, “What if it never goes away?” and “How do I move on?” However, this calmer portion of the EP is quickly disrupted midway through the track, as listeners are thrown back into Veronica’s maximalist whirlpool of sounds with a resurgence of pounding drums, alongside frenzied guitars courtesy of Stavros Lari and Dylan Hamburger. This also creates a sense of cyclicality akin to Zarzuela’s inspiration for “Pleasantville,” which references the claustrophobia of her college years in rural Ohio, as well as the feeling captured in Gary Ross’s 1998 film Pleasantville of trying to escape but ending up right where you started.
Closing Rottweiler, “Joanie” is a somewhat unexpected track, adding another twist to the EP as Veronica swaps their electric guitars for acoustic. Zarzuela’s voice soars over softer, simpler instrumentals: “I pray to God but he never answers anything / I’ll just ask my boyfriend what he thinks,” she sings with a wry touch. If the project is an “exercise in exorcism,” as Zarzeula confesses in her press release, the band seems to have fully purged themselves from the anguish bubbling up in tracks like “Blue Ribbon” and “Half Closed Doors” by the time we get to “Joanie.” The result is a more cohesive set of songs, giving listeners a taste of who Veronica is: a gloriously gritty group bursting with relatability for teenage girls and young women who have loved and lusted. In just six songs, Rottweiler expands and contracts with shrieks and sighs, truly unleashing Veronica’s potential—with its catchy riffs and raw lyrics, it’s a record that will claw its way into your head, as well as, your heart.
