TLOBF Loves… The Veils

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London/New Zealand band The Veils have released two albums in two different incarnations – 2001’s The Runaway Found and 2006’s Nux Vomica – the common denominator for both being tortured-soul frontman Finn Andrews.

Andrews (son of XTC and Shriekback’s Barru Andrews) has one of modern music’s genuinely impressive and distinctive voices, and an intense-yet-frail beauty to accompany it. Often coming across like a croaking impassioned torch singer, he is probably one of those performers that you’ll either hate or totally fall for, and is – if anything – more intense when seen live than on record.

The subject matter that the band covers manages to be simultaneously theatrical and gritty, successfully negotiating the no-mans’ land between high drama and melodrama. From The Runway Found, check out ‘My Guiding Light’, ‘The Tide That Left And Never Came Back’ or ‘The Nowhere Man’. From Nux Vomica – arguably the greater of the two albums – check out pretty much every track, but with particular attention to the overwrought opener ‘Not Yet’, ‘Calliope!’, the touching yet rather depressing ’Advice For Young Mothers To Be’ and the regretfully nostalgic ‘The House Where We All Live’.

This band are a dark, intense and mysterious delight, and left an awed crowd at London’s Borderline almost stunned into silence when they played last year. Give way to your darker side and investigate them further.