Failed Mopers

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

The Chicago-based alternative-rock quartet Veruca Salt is named after a character in the children's book Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, a spoiled brat who is thrown down a garbage chute by 99 angry squirrels. It's a provocative name because there are a lot of whiny alternative bands that deserve to be disposed of the same way.

But Veruca Salt isn't one of them. On the group's debut CD, American Thighs, singer-guitarist Nina Gordon, singer-guitarist Louise Post, bassist Steve Lack and drummer Jim Shapiro make music that is both disturbingly dysfunctional and thoroughly enjoyable. The band's lyrics are downbeat, fuzzy and weird while the tunes are upbeat and full of melodic guitar bravado. On the energetic Celebrate You, Post sings, "And in the dream/ You held a gun/ You killed off all who hurt you," accompanied by bright, jangling guitars. On All Hail Me, when Post cries, "I killed your baby/ I don't know how," the horror in her words is offset by big, hooky guitar riffs.

The best song on the CD is 25, a track that seems like the nursery-rhyme version of a troubled young woman's diary. "When I was five/ I took a dive," Gordon sings. "When I was 10/ I walked again." The song closes with a thunderous guitar solo that evokes the frustration and jubilation of being in one's 20s -- sort of like MTV's The Real World packed into a couple dozen screeching notes. It's moments like the one at the end of 25 that separate Veruca Salt from bands that deserve the squirrel treatment. The members allow themselves to be caught up in the joy of playing rock 'n' roll, and they take their listeners along.