The light behind The Veils

The Veils’ Finn Andrews unveils the songs that make up their new album Total Depravity. Mike Alexander delves deeper.

THE Veils new album Total Depravity, which was released on August 26, is already getting the kind of critical acclaim that could see the band break through globally.

The musical love-child of expatriate Kiwis, vocalist Finn Andrews and bass player Sophia Burns who met at high school in New Zealand, The Veils have been described by Uncut magazine as ‘‘like savage collisions of Bowie, Nick Cave and nine Inch Nails’’.

English music bible NME describes Total Depravity as ‘‘Creepy Lynchian echoes . . . a southern Gothic sound’’, while The Independent says it ‘‘was an absorbing journey’’.

‘‘We really wanted to try to take ourselves somewhere new and slightly uncomfortable with this one. I really didn’t know where we were heading exactly until we got there, which was exciting,’’ Andrews says.

Some of the credit for The Veils’ new kind of edginess has to go to producer EL-P.

‘‘We met up in Los Angeles and became good friends very quickly,’’ Andrews says. ‘‘I guess what excited me most was working with someone so accomplished in a completely different genre of music who understood what we did so well. It was a rare opportunity really.

‘‘I was pretty all over the place for much of it. It was our first record with a new label and they were very good about not getting involved and just giving us the time we needed to experiment, but it’s a highly emotional process making records, especially when you add into that working with people in several different countries at the same time.’’

In between media commitments in the United Kingdom and the United States, Andrews gave Sunday News a rundown of each of the songs on Total Depravity. I find listening to people play Axolotl on the radio, and hearing them react is hilarious – some really don’t know what’s going on in it! I found that one quite funny, the evangelical preacher turning into an endangered Mexican salamander, what’s not to love about that? I thought it was a pretty funny premise for a song. My first toy when I was a kid was a platypus. It has the bill of a duck on the body of a beaver, I guess you would say. It’s a mammal, but it lays eggs. It’s a real anomaly. I really loved platypuses when I was a kid and mymumused to have pet axolotls as well, so this is the first time I encountered that word, but they are a similar anomaly… I sort of like these creatures that are referred to as mistakes, mistakes of God.

I loved Bill Hicks when I was at school. There was this great bit about creationists and them saying that fossils of dinosaurs are just a way of God testing the faith of mankind, and Hicks joked about God being a sort of prankster out in the desert, burying dinosaur bones to fool everybody. That image stuck with me as well. I like the idea of God making mistakes and in some way there are some things that are just an anomaly, so that was the idea… the beginning of the song is that idea I guess. This has some sexy guitar in it. It’s actually a layered, really hideous keyboard sound, which you can’t hear because it’s buried underneath the guitar. The proper guitar is on the top, but when we tried to take the horrible sound out and it just sounded s*** so it turned out together they make this very sexy sound. That’s what I would say about A Bit on the Side. It is involving a sort of dancing devil and some club, public school initiation rituals. This is probably one of the oldest songs on the record. It’s got a really great drum thing; we have been watching the drums for quite a while. This is a song about an enigmatic, possibly sociopathic truck driver. Yeah. Enjoy. This was originally a full band song that we then messed around with later. I draw a lot of crocodiles, obsessively draw crocodiles, they’re not very good, but I have drawn hundreds of them, just this sort of little doodle and they have been on my mind a long time. The doodles might have something to do with the song as well. This is a rowdy little number. I don’t think about it being about zombies, I don’t think it is about zombies. It’s sort of the end of the world, when the dead rise again. I thought it was quite funny. I liked having L Ron Hubbard and Steve McQueen and some good characters in it. Yeah. Enjoy. I actually wrote three songs called In the Blood and this is the one we used. They are all totally different songs. I find this one puts me in a very strange mental state. ‘‘Now papa’s turning out the lights so you’ll never love another’’, that’s a dark little line. Iodine and Iron is probably the oldest song on the record. It’s got a nice mixture, I think, of the band and the processed string sounds and things. It’s probably one of my favourites on the record. I’ve lived in the same flat in London since I was 16. I’ve been there a long time and there are a lot of people who have lived there too. I’ve written most of our records in there and I have this old piano that’s fallen through the floor a few times. It’s a strange place, with a lot of things that the walls could say if they were to speak. It’s sort of a song about that.

‘ I draw a lot of crocodiles, obsessively draw crocodiles, they’re not very good, but I have drawn hundreds of them, just this sort of little doodle and they have been on my mind a long time.’ FINN ANDREWS

This is a sinister little song. I don’t know if there is a sort of strange narrator in it and if he is the good guy or the villain. I don’t really know, I think maybe he is both, but more likely the villain. The choruses in this song are sung by some friends of ours and a girl named Church, who was a Freddie Mercury impersonator in Los Angeles for a while, as well as a solo artist. She does a great job in the chorus, I think. This is the only chorus that I have not sung in a Veils song as well. This one was recorded at David Lynch’s house a few years ago. We sort of intentionally made the synth sound, it’s a very Laura Palm-ery sound and again very sinister. It’s a love song really but it’s sung from, ‘‘I think he’s waiting outside in the bushes outside your house’’ sort of love song. But it’s still quite sweet in its own way. This is the title track off the record. It’s an angry little beast. But yeah, it seemed like a good way to go out with a bit of venom. Yeah, Total Depravity.