ALBUM: The Veils – Sun Gangs

ALBUM REVIEW: The Veils – Sun Gangs (Rough Trade)
words: Jamie Milton
originally scribed for thisisfakediy

The Veils have been waiting and waiting for something to blow over, for some kind record store chain to go wild and welcome the band into a world of more exposure, more attention, more record sales:
“Some day, a little rain is bound to fall”
Or have they?
Because it’s been proven, or at least it may as well have been proven that with less pressure comes better production. It seems relevant to mention Elbow just one more time. Their consistency relied on what I believe to be a sheer lack of a load on their backs, no record label heads peering their heads through the studio door, tapping at their watch. The Veils are by no means a rich bunch but from the start they had critical acclaim, acknowledgement of their achievements. Far from being ignored but far from being forgotten, their third record, ‘Sun Gangs’ is yet another should-be breakthrough album, and a continuation of the flawless form Finn Andrews and his cronies find themselves in.

Inside lurks the sound of a band having fun, challenging their own boundaries and modernising their sound with the click of a finger. It’s Andrews’ songwriting, both diverse and unchangeable in quality, that pulls the album from a heap of contemporaries and gives it prominence. A reliance on perfect choruses (see ‘The Letter’ and ‘Killed By The Boom’) and the occasional digression into something more experimental and forward-thinking makes this nothing new in the Veils’ books, but something frighteningly exciting for the casual listener.

There’s a rich blend of edgy anthems and melancholic ballads, each offering something new throughout. ‘Three Sisters’ gives mention to Muse, with an elongated cry of “Oh my God!” during the chorus, whereas the more light-hearted ‘The House She Lived In’ sounds like a more compressed Wave Pictures, excluding the food imagery. There’s such continuous variety but somehow, ‘Sun Gangs’ fails to sound puzzled or overwhelmed, instead giving a feel of being perfectly as one, with such a straightforward flow between one track and its predecessor.

Andrews remains as heartfelt as ever with his delivery(“I’d offer my soul, if I thought it might help at all“), and this assists the record from sounding unauthentic, with such glossy production from Graham Sutton. On the one hand, there isn’t a dull moment to grasp at. On the other, there’s nothing to give The Veils a healthy glow so that they can be the next of the bunch to be picked for radio airplay and stadium headline shows, in the sense that everything’s either too edgy or maybe a little unoriginal. But credit to the band, they’ve stuck to their game and they’re fortunate enough to be able to do so. As long as ‘Sun Gangs’ doesn’t go platinum and EMI don’t steal the rights from Rough Trade, we can expect yet another near-unmarred collection of songs.

7.9

mp3: The Veils – Larkspur [alt]

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