Salt-Free: The Rest of Nina Gordon's Life

Though she embodied half of the songwriting and singing team behind alt-rock band Veruca Salt - who first rocked the Grunge Nation with "Seether" back in the halcyon, guitar-slinging days of '93 - Nina Gordon represented considerably more than half of Veruca's pop smarts. It was she who crafted the group's canniest and most memorable songs, equal parts power-pop ferocity and teen-girl sentiment. Her partner-in-crime, Louise Post, always seemed on some grim, heavy-metal mission; her tunes often pushed the amp-shredding envelope at the expense of melody.

Yet Veruca Salt's team ethic demanded that a Nina single (like the ravishing rocker "Volcano Girls") be followed up at radio by a Louise single (such as the impenetrable "Shutterbug"); as a result, the group's half-great '96 effort, "Eight Arms to Hold You," lost all commercial momentum.

Ultimately, the pair split up; Post retained the Veruca Salt moniker and Gordon began work on a solo album. Freed of the chick-metal, chip-on-shoulder imperative that weighed her down in the band, Gordon has come up with one of the most beguiling, melodic pop albums of the year. "Tonight and the Rest of My Life" (Warner Bros., in stores 6/27) is chock-full of bulls-eye hooks, elegant arrangements, soaring harmonies, sophisticated lyrical conceits and earnest, beautiful singing.

Starting with the mid-tempo rocker "Now I Can Die," which boasts a rhapsodic chorus that scrawls its romantic jubilation like a swirl of hearts on the back of a Pee Chee folder, Gordon indulges her emotional impulses to a fault-but never stoops to the puerile sentimentality that mars the work of so many of her peers. Even at her gushiest (the yearning ballad "Hold Me"), she connects through the sheer honesty and integrity of her performance.

But there is a seeming return here to a persona younger than the bruised, combative, femme-rocker pose of Veruca Salt. Witness the glorious "Horses in the City," with its compassionate summary of adolescent confusion: "Help me, 'cause I'm falling out of grace/I hang my head and hide my face/I don't know what it is, I just feel out of place/Like horses in the city." Standing on the narrow ground between teen-pop schmaltz and smarmy modern-rock irony, it's bold of Gordon to sing with such genuine innocence.

The title track, meanwhile, suggests the floaty mysticism of Sarah McLachlan (it'll be the first radio single); "New Year's Eve" battles forced separation with wit and verve; "2003" merges dogged commitment with personal emancipation. Those who fondly recall Veruca Salt's high-energy onslaught won't be disappointed by rockers "Badway" and "Number One Camera."

Produced by studio champ Bob Rock (who helmed "Eight Arms" as well as a handful of '80s rock chestnuts), "Tonight" is a solid, multifaceted effort that positions Nina Gordon as one of the strongest and most promising artists in rock.

Is radio ready for music this tuneful, guileless and wise? Stay tuned.

--Simon Glickman