Lead man of The Veils, Finn Andrews, may not yet have a handle on the band's latest album but there's no doubt everyone else is getting it, writes Scott Kara
For someone who sounds so passionate on record, Finn Andrews of the Veils is a timid and softly spoken soul to talk to.
And if he didn't write such powerful and intense songs, like the deranged bedlam of Killed By the Boom from the band's third album Sun Gangs, he could come across as flaky.
He's still not too sure what to make of his new album even though it's been out nearly two weeks and getting good raps both here and overseas.
"It sometimes takes a year or two - or longer - to come into focus. There are parts of the record I have a grasp on but it's still a bit of a mystery really," he offers, almost apologetically, down the phone from his home base in London. "It's a grower," he laughs.
For him and the listener both ...
"It's strange," he adds, "because things don't really make sense for a while, and I found that with the last two records too. I try not to think too much about what I'm doing because if I did I think I'd go crazy. So I just write what I need to and often it doesn't make a great deal of sense."
Though the 25-year-old is still getting to grips with it, there's no doubt Sun Gangs is the band's best and most accomplished album yet.
Andrews, who was born in London but spent his formative years on the North Shore where he attended Belmont Intermediate and Takapuna Grammar, and played at the Devonport Folk Club, has always been a talent.
He's also from a musical family, being the son of Barry Andrews who founded new wave act XTC in the late 70s and later 80s oddballs Shriekback.
His 2004 debut, The Runaway Found, which he wrote as a 16-year-old while still at Takapuna Grammar, was derivative but promising; 2006's Nux Vomica was more self-assured and made them indie favourites; and Sun Gangs could be the one to help them break through after nearly nine years - on and off - abroad.
He still calls New Zealand home - he wants to know when this piece will be in the paper so he can tell his mum - and he finds it an inspiring place to write songs.
Most of Nux Vomica was written here during a burst of creativity in 2005 and this time round Sun Gangs was no exception.
"I broke the back of most of the writing in New Zealand because there's this strange thing where things kind of come into focus when I'm back there. It was while there that I wrote the first few songs that make up the record."
Other songs were written in London and during a four-month stint where the band were holed up in a warehouse in Oklahoma - an ideal midway point between the east and west coasts of the US while they were touring.
"It was a warehouse where lots of people stored their classic cars - something to do with the humidity or something. I didn't really understand it. It was this enormous garage with Aston Martins, Corvettes, Cadillacs ... It was a pretty surreal period where we'd play in New York, Boston, and Chicago, and then drive back to Oklahoma for a couple of weeks and then drive to the west coast to play LA and San Francisco. Kind of ping-pong.
"But the record company wanted us to tour to the point of madness and we were up for it because we'd never really explored that country before."
It was during this time that piano and organ player Liam Gerard - an old friend of Andrews - left the band. The Veils has always had a transient line-up - although North Shore bass player Sophia Burn, German drummer Henning Dietz, and guitarist Dan Raishbrook have been solid members since 2005 - and Andrews says it will continue to be that way. But there was no ill feeling when his old music-making school chum left.
"We'd been on tour for a year and he'd just had enough of it really. And the band has always got an element of people flowing in and out of it so it seemed like the right time. He had other plans."
He insists it's not because as a band leader and songwriter he's a hard taskmaster. "Well I hope it's not," he laughs, "and we didn't fall out. We hung out in London just the other night."
Also while in Oklahoma they used The Flaming Lips' studio to record demos and the time they spent in America comes through on the album.
"There's always been a lot of American influence anyway, but definitely there is an influence [on Sun Gangs].
There is just a tremendous amount of stories in that country, it's so vast, and driving around for that long, you realise the scale of things are so enormous. You can't help but be inspired by that."
Andrews has always had a measured intensity, occasionally unleashed, with Jesus For the Jugular off Nux Vomica one of the best examples. On Sun Gangs he takes it a step further with rumbling eight-minute epic Larkspur, which transports you to a lonely highway somewhere in the American mid-west.
"Larkspur is an odd one really because it was one of the last ones I wrote and we didn't play it live, or work on it in rehearsals, we left it completely untouched and did it in one take. It's just kind of a mad little moment." He says that song, and the majority of the album, is about the reason you do the things you do.
"There are a lot of love songs, heartbroken sentiments, and it's also very hopeful as well but Larkspur is about the need and urge to write things down.
There are a lot of strange urges on the record and lots of dissections about falling in love, then getting broken to bits by it and wondering why you bothered in the first place. And then you fall in love again and it's this strange circular madness."
So it's been a time of personal upheaval over the last couple of years then?
"It's been a strange one," he laughs again.
"I feel like each of the albums are a weird transitional thing for me.
It's quite strange making records because when they come out you always see them as marking a bridge between two parts of your life."
He's not giving anything away, but as he says, he's still figuring out what Sun Gangs is all about - so come back and ask him about his past loves and losses in a couple of years.
LOWDOWN
Who: Finn Andrews, leader of the Veils
What: Half-New Zealand gloom rockers on the rise
New album: Sun Gangs, out now
Past albums: The Runaway Found (2004); Nux Vomica (2006)
