The Veronicas: Godzilla / Human | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, “To issue one album after a long hiatus may be regarded as fortunate, to issue two within a month of each other looks like carelessness.” The Brisbane twins Lisa and Jessica Origliasso have doubled their album output as The Veronicas with Godzilla, out at the very end of May this year and then four weeks later Human. Both are full length releases with twelve tracks each and Godzilla was their first since their eponymous 2014 album.

The reasoning behind this avalanche of tunes is best left to Sony Australia to explain (like, they have had a bit of that to do lately, so they should be up for it). The tracks that comprise Godzilla feature previously released singles In My Blood from 2016 and 2017’s The Only High and on Human the equally “old” singles On Your Side (2016), Think Of Me (2019) and the relevantly recent Biting My Tongue (2020). With that amount of chart dominating fire-power, how does the rest of the content shape up?

It’s a bit hither and thither, to be frank. With a slew of producers, writers and locations used to create the two albums, the coherence isn’t there that a purpose made album would display. However, that could also be the mindset of this reviewer who is from a previous generation expecting artists “to work on an album”, release it, promote it and then move on to the next project a year or some later. And, to be fair, Human does hang together fairly well, given that a third of the album is produced by and co-written with David Muscemci & Anthony Egizii aka DNA, regular collaborators with the Origliasso twins. Their uncanny knack of providing a song with that chart-topping sheen is one of the reasons Human does work as an album. Over on Godzilla their contribution is restricted to the two aforementioned singles which are fairly perfect as pop songs go – one an earworm worthy banger, the other an emoting, soaring ballad.

According to the pressers sent around ahead of these two albums, the selection of what went where fell into The Veronicas-as-cat-suited-strutting-vixens, personas that are reminiscent of their earlier 2000s recordings (Godzilla) and The Veronicas-as-vulnerable-songwriters, perhaps setting out their stall for where they might go in the future (Human). Depending on your taste and response to those two descriptions is where your preference for these albums will land.

Human is markedly the more contemporary in sound with an array of collaborators - Lies (featuring Muki); Movie Star (featuring Fr33sol and Lavva) Out of Time (featuring Wrabel) and the recent single Life of the Party (featuring Allday). Godzilla only has Silent (featuring Travis Barker). Apart from DNA only US based German writer/producer Toby Gad & 1984 (aka Wes Jones & Mat Sherman (with three and two songs respectively on Godzilla) and South African Robby De Sá and Australian Sam Sakr (both contributing two songs each on Human) have multiple producer credits.

Back in the day of vinyl albums, these two separate releases would most likely have been combined as a double LP release with extensive packaging, photos, liner notes – the full works. Now it seems that digital first releasing allows an artist to lay out all they have been working on. Given this has been a stop-start project spanning more than five years releasing two albums nearly at once leans toward that “careless” remark. Though it does give those who follow The Veronicas an option – if you liked their rockier, pop driven sound from earlier on, go for Godzilla; if you want something of their creative future direction, complete with collaborations left, right and centre, go with Human. Or as a famous ad says, “Why not both?” Why not indeed…2021 isn’t much better than 2020, we need all the distractions – careless or not – that we can get.

- Blair Martin.
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