For over two decades, The Veils have occupied a singular corner of alternative music — a band forged in literary darkness, driven by the restless vision of English-New Zealand singer-songwriter Finn Andrews. Signed to Rough Trade Records when Andrews was just 16, the band has now released eight studio albums, charting a course from the gothic post-punk of their 2004 debut The Runaway Found through to the hushed, contemplative beauty of last year’s Asphodels. Along the way, they’ve earned admirers in unexpected places — filmmakers David Lynch, Tim Burton, and Paolo Sorrentino have all featured The Veils’ music in their work, and the band has built a formidable reputation as one of the great live acts on the planet.
Now, barely a year after Asphodels, they’re back — and Fragile World is a deliberate about-face.
Andrews is characteristically direct about the motivation: “I make each album, generally, as a kind of atonement for the last. Asphodels was so quiet and introspective, I think I just wanted to make something strident and full of life for a goddamn change.” (Rolling Stone)
Recorded live to tape in New Zealand by Paddy Hill and produced by Tom Healy (whose credits include Tiny Ruins and The Chills), the album was created in just a few weeks with minimal pre-planning — a process Andrews describes as genuinely thrilling and more than a little frightening. He told Rough Trade: “We went into the studio with a lot of songs, but very little idea of the arrangements or instrumentation. It was truly exciting having no idea what this record would sound like and only a few weeks to figure it out… It was all very instinctual, quite full-on, and scary at times — but a good kind of scary, not scary like the real world out there.”
Critical reception has been warm. Silent Radio praised Andrews’ vivid imagery and darker themes, drawing comparisons to Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, while Maximum Volume Music called it overflowing with poetic, expressive and moving lyrical content, music which is both graceful and elegant, though the subject matter is immersed in existential themes. The band’s back catalogue has long drawn superlatives — Pitchfork described their live sound as “horse-whipped, lightning-crash clamour… magnetic,” while The Guardian praised Andrews as “refreshingly passionate,” raging “with a Herculean intensity.”
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