Graham Reid | | 2 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes as a double album set on clear vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
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Many musicians delivering post-lockdown albums tell of enduring emotional isolation during Covid and being unable to earn from live performances in this age of streaming.
The woes of Finn Andrews, mainman for the Veils, began even earlier when touring the Veils 2016 album Total Depravity. He broke his wrist during furious piano hammering at a concert.
“I was in a cast and couldn't use my right hand,” he says about trying to write again. “I sang the melody lines then recorded the right hand piano part, then the left hand part. It might have been an interesting avant-garde process if it wasn't also just profoundly annoying.”
English-born and spending formative teenage years on Auckland's North Shore, Andrews – in his distinctive wide-brimmed black hat – had guided his Veils (and guest players) through five albums recorded in London, Auckland and Los Angeles, as well as four EPs and international touring.
Responses were often glowing: “Andrews rages with a Herculean intensity” said The Guardian; “One of the finest songwriters of his generation” according to the British webzine Drowned in Sound.
Andrews is no longer described as the son of songwriter/keyboard player Barry (XTC, Shriekback) Andrews because he's created himself from an alphabet of influences: Bowie, Cave, Cohen, Dylan . . .
But the injury, Covid lockdown and no recording contract meant staring into the void with an “overwhelming sense the time had come to hang up my big stupid hat”.
A breakthrough came with Undertow on the Veils' new double album under the redemptive title And Out of the Void Came Love, a song which “seemed to be willing me to carry on” and commit to music: “Just like my daddy did before me,” he sings. “All it takes is all my love, it's in the blood”.
Selected live appearances – notably intimate 2021 Auckland concerts with the NZTrio who appear on the album – road-tested the new songs. The result is an album which sounds bedded-in and astutely shaped from the moody opener Time (“time is a devil/rock/riddle/tempest . . .”) to the gentle Cradle Song about his baby daughter.
A double album allows Andrews' Veils and their many guests (with exceptional string arrangements by Victoria Kelly) to explore The Pearl (Part II) and The Day I Met My Murderer – both mythic, European-sounding folk ballads in the manner of Leonard Cohen – and the seductive piano ballad Rings of Saturn. There's also speak-sing solemnity on the dramatic Diamonds and Coal, the maelstrom of Bullfighter (Hand of God) where Andrews comes on like an enraged Dylan and the aggressively apocalyptic rock of Epoch.
Although Andrews still wears something of his influences, the ambition, refinement and guiding intelligence here suggest he, and we, should be glad he didn't hang up his big stupid hat.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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The Veils NZ tour:
Loons, Lyttelton, March 16; Dive, Dunedin, March 17; Sherwood, Queenstown, March 18; Totara St. Mount Maunganui, March 23; Cabana, Napier, March 24; The Yard, Raglan; March 25; Theatre Royal, Nelson, March 30; Opera House, Wellington, March 3; Powerstation, Auckland, April 1
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