Six years after her only solo record and almost a decade after her departure from Veruca Salt, Nina Gordon is on the verge of turning into another whatever-happened-to story from Chicago’s 90s alt-rock boom. But there’s no scandal or tragedy behind her long absence from the public eye. Though she’s left Chicago for LA, where she’s settled down with longtime boyfriend and former Tonic guitarist Jeff Russo, she hasn’t abandoned music. She hasn’t even lost the support of her old label, Warner Brothers, despite the long wait for her second release. In the past few years she’s cut an album, shelved it, and then made another, called Bleeding Heart Graffiti. The new disc comes out July 18, and with it Gordon returns to a music world that’s been dramatically transformed by digital marketing trends and a wave of major-label consolidation. “It does feel a little daunting to be back,” she says. “I mean, in rock ‘n’ roll years I’ve been gone a long, long time.”
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Gordon’s solo career began after a legendarily acrimonious split with Veruca Salt coleader Louise Post in 1998. With her 2000 solo debut, Tonight and the Rest of My Life, she took a gamble, moving away from the band’s buzzing rock and recasting herself as a glossy pop heroine. Most critics were indifferent, but the album sold about 300,000 copies worldwide–not quite as many as Eight Arms to Hold You, the last Veruca Salt album she’d played on, but more than the band’s first post-Gordon disc, Resolver, which sold less than 100,000. “The record wasn’t a massive commercial success,” says Gordon. “But it did really well. It sold enough that I was allowed to make another record, which is all you really want.”
With her label’s blessing, Gordon started over in spring 2005, hooking up with longtime collaborator Bob Rock, who’d produced Eight Arms to Hold You and Tonight. They’d completed Gordon’s first solo album during a leisurely seven months in Maui, but the basic tracks for Bleeding Heart Graffiti came together in just a couple days at LA’s Sunset Sound. “Most of the songs were tracked live, and I got a bunch of great musicians and did something like 12 songs in two days,” she says.
