A recent viral video on TikTok shows a young black man asking where have all the rock bands gone. Well, I think he wasn’t looking in Vera Bloom‘s direction. On her sophomore EP, the Nashville-based artist plants herself as a true rocker-to-watch, invoking the raw, guttural fury of group’s like Hole, and melding in classic and psych-rock elements for an impressive collection of songs.
With the coarse drumming and bass underscoring lines like “I’ll be your angel now, but I need moments fueled by sweat and sin” on opener “Eyes on You”, Bloom stakes her claim in the sediment of rock. This isn’t one of those pop stars adding electronic guitar and drums sounds to mimic nu-wave pop-punk; this is someone putting themselves in the same class as Chrissy Hynde, Joan Jett and Courtney Love without trying to say it. Bloom has the rage, clear in her evisceration of two-faced, soul-sucking lovers in shoegaze-grunge of “Say Goodbye” and wailing garage rock of “Mud” (“It’s the type of mud that pulls you down and sucks the life from you. Guess what? You’re mud!”).
None of this is to say Bloom doesn’t know how to sweeten the sour enough to make her songs pop. “Boxes” hooks you in with its claustrophobic chorus, and the 80’s synths included in the mid-tempo, alternative “Serenity” could fit in with The Pretenders‘ best work, while also showcasing an empathetic vulnerability not seen elsewhere in the EP (“Swallow your loneliness up, it’s all you got right now”). And Bloom even dips her toe into the realm of Pink Floyd on the title track, as the frenetic drumming is paired off with 70’s psych-rock guitars to lend a spatial atmosphere to mind-bending lines like “I turn the lights off to shut my eyes. The serpent head comes out to steal my mind.”
All the references made above are made more to give you readers’ out there reference points, and not to put Vera Bloom into any one box. She’s a talented artist writing her own page in the annals of rock, and It’s Me is a fantastic chapter. Listen to her latest single here, and hear the entire EP this Friday, September 29th.
The Indy Review 
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