The Veils @ Spaceland, 6/29/07

Finn Andrews’ of The Veils has that essential desperation and threadbare look of an early Rough Trade B&W promo shot. Think early Smiths, Scritti. You hear it on the record and see it from the moment he steps on stage. He’s slim as a hat rack in his big jacket and cuts a visage that is somewhere in the overlap of a Venn diagram between Joe Strummer and Jeff Buckley, pleading eyebrows and spastic choking of his guitar neck. The man feels it. Even the gaggles of oblivious industry underlings out in force tonight at Spaceland tonight, fresh faced Blackberrying D-girls and junior publicist types barnacled at the bar side of the room, surely must notice that he is feeling it. Then again, some guy is showing off his glowing iPhone, so who knows.

Despite the apparent privileges in his biography—Finn’s rock n’ roll lineage as son of keyboardist Barry Andrews; the fact the new record was recorded in LA with Nick Launay—not for a second does he affected or feel anything less than genuine. The rest of the band, however, don’t convey as much. They are mostly competent but their casualness in attitude and dress are in sharp contrast to their main man, which depending on what side of the fence you fall on in the “keeping it real” divide, is either a hindrance or irrelevant to The Veils future. They rock and jangle through an hour long set, closing out with “Not Yet” off the new LP, the best opening track off a record released this year. Hopefully they won’t take two years between records and visits to the States and we’ll get to see/hear/feel more from them.

Photos by Jenn