Seven years separated the third
Veronicas
album from the second -- a substantial break characterized by feuds with their record company that ultimately led to much of their planned third album being scrapped. Undaunted, the duo finally switched allegiances from
Warner
to
Sony
and proceeded to polish up
The Veronicas
, recorded in 2010 with a variety of collaborators. As always,
Toby Gad
is on board for a large chunk of the album, but so is
Nellee Hooper
("Cold"),
Roger Alan Nichols
("Sanctified"),
DNA
("You Ruin Me," "If You Love Someone"), and
Daniel Johns
under his
Dreamlab
guise with
Ruffian
. Most modern new millennial pop albums are made with this many cooks, with the expectation that the charisma of the artist ties it together -- and
Jessica
and
Lisa Origliasso
do indeed have the vision to make
seem coherent. From the start,
the Veronicas
have been razor-sharp, spending nearly as much time with sugary pop sounds of the past as they did with cutting-edge sounds, and although the album bears the slightest traces of cycling through sounds that were hip a few years earlier, that's where the group's smarts come into play. Not only is their melodic sense finely honed, there's often wit there (enough to mitigate songs too on the nose, like "Born Bob Dylan") and the record is restless, incorporating everything from modern to retro soul, EDM glances, and pop classicism. That imagination keeps
hopping even through its occasional slow parts and, more than anything, it also shows that pop has been poorer without
in it. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine