The Veils: Runaway Found

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Herald rating: * * *

Guitar quartet the Veils might sound extremely English but there is a local connection, as shown by the liner notes thank you from frontman Finn Andrews to that local School of Rock, the Devonport Folk Club.

Andrews grew up in Britain and the North Shore, took his musical ambitions back to England and got himself a band, a label signing and now a debut album.

He is the son of Barry Andrews, who was the brilliant keyboardist in the early days of XTC before fronting the reptilian art-funk outfit Shriekback. Not that you can draw any inter-generational musical connections from the sound of this hearty first offering, partly produced by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.

Andrews' keening vocals are the defining factor. His singing is searingly sweet and given to occasional high-note heroics, all of which certainly suits being in front of a band who seem to relish playing as if they are battling a stiff headwind on a cliff-top above raging seas. Bombastic perhaps, but rather bracing.

It is at its best as Andrews' and the band sweep from the fireworks of More Heat Than Light and Vicious Traditions to the melancholy balladry of the C.S. Lewis-quoting The Nowhere Man and single Lavinia.

They can sometimes remind of Bends-era Radiohead (The Leaver's Dance, Talk Down the Girl), the Verve, and contemporaries Starsailor, and on The Wild Son and The Tide That Left & Never Came Back, they show why they have recorded for a label that was once the home of the Smiths.

But through sheer force of delivery and all that grand ambition, the Veils rise above being just another Britrock band with a shady Antipodean folk club past.

(Rough Trade)