Having recently unveiled their seventh studio album ‘Asphodels,’ The Veils’ Finn Andrews runs us through the new nine-track LP and his fascination with writing about love and death.

Stream: “The Ladder” – The Veils

Based in New Zealand, The Veils are no stranger to the music scene – having been in the game for over two decades, with their first album released way back in 2004.

Over the years, it’s clear that The Veils has only grown stronger, with frontman Finn Andrews’ artistry maturing and evolving. He’s not only honed his craft but has also delved deeper into creating a sound that is distinctly his own. Now, having unveiled his seventh studio album, Asphodels, The Veils’ latest work is a testament to everything Andrews has been working towards, capturing the culmination of his artistic journey.

Recorded live to tape over five days at Roundhead Studios in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the nine-track Asphodels was named after the Ancient Greek flower of the Underworld and has been described by Andrews as being influenced more by poets than songwriters.

Andrews explains that after two decades of writing, he has reached a pivotal point in his career where he feels able to express his thoughts and emotions more directly, allowing him to truly be his most authentic self.

He confides, “I think after your 7th album, much like turning 40, you should really just stop counting. I’ve learned a lot along the way, which I suppose is the whole point, and I’ve really distilled it all into these 9 songs. As always, I really just write about love and death – it’s a compulsion – and that is once again the case here. But I feel as though I’ve never been able to express this stuff rattling about in my brain quite as directly until now. I have rarely felt proud of anything I’ve made for very long, but this one feels different. It’s built on a strong foundation I think.”

Below, Finn Andrews takes us through Asphodels, track-by-track, as he delves into the stories and inspiration behind the album.

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:: stream/purchase Asphodels here ::

:: connect with The Veils here ::

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Stream: ‘Asphodels’ – The Veils

:: Inside Asphodels ::

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Asphodels

This song began with a poem that my dad recommended to me called A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford by Derek Mahon. It is one of my dad’s favourite poems and has fast become one of mine too. It begins with a quote:

“Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels”. —Seferis, Mythistorema

I was drawn to the word asphodels immediately, and as rudimentary as it may sound, this one word provided the springboard into the entire song. I continue to be amazed by how simple these initial gateways often are – sometimes just a word or three notes of a melody are enough to begin to reveal whole worlds.

I picked up my dear old flamenco guitar (named Paloma, like my daughter) and started playing a descending run on it in some haphazard open tuning, and I wrote a verse:

And when my soul arrived
It looked just like they said
With the ringing bells and the asphodels
In the valley of the dead

Something about the guitar part felt rather laboured and uninteresting – I’ve never been a dexterous enough guitar player to pull off anything intricate with finger-picking. I am envious of those with this talent (see Hollie Fullbrook of Tiny Ruins), and I knew I couldn’t possibly compete, so I moved the whole affair over to the piano instead.

This proved to be a critical decision in the life of the song. The guitar part is quite unnatural to play on the piano, and I think it provides the central tension of the whole thing – in fact I feel certain that had I not moved it from guitar, I would have probably ended up abandoning the song altogether.

Writing lyrics has now become a profoundly lengthy process for me. The words are like these pebbles in an ocean being shaped over time – I observe their progress occasionally, and then before I know it, it’s been four years, and they’ve miraculously taken shape. I like the effect that time passing has on them, and I find that rather than their focus being on one specific moment, they have the mark of years of varied experience etched gradually into them. It is also a canny method for restraining my immediate desires for them. Please allow me to explain.

When I sit down to write a song, it is treacherously easy to try to contort it into a shape that suits my base interests at that particular moment. Perhaps I think a hit single would be nice, or perhaps I just want to make something drastically different to the last song I wrote. I find that this process of dramatically elongating the writing process removes a great deal of these petty ambitions and allows the song the space and, crucially, the time to become the song it so desperately yearns to be. It is far from foolproof, but it’s the closest thing to a method I’ve found in the perennial madness of songwriting. One must, I have heard said, learn how to get out of the way.

Anyway, that’s how this song came together, too, until a narrative emerged of a weary, lovelorn protagonist wandering out into the woods to die. Ah doomed love – that’s what pays the bills in the Andrews household. The story of the song has echoes of various myths – Orpheus and Eurydice, of course, but also Oisín and Niamh in Tír na nÓg and the Japanese fairy tale of Urashima Tarō. I’d actually love to set more songs in the Celtic Underworld:

“where bloom is on every bough, and the air heavy with the sweetness of orchards”
It sounds bloody lovely there.

I knew the song needed to be played on an upright piano rather than a grand as it’s such a delicate and slight little song, but the upright piano we had in the studio was incredibly raucous and bright. We had the idea to pack it with felt so that the hammers were somewhat muted but allowed them just enough space that the notes could still be heard. It looked like some strange piece of Joseph Beuys installation art, which appealed, and I loved the muffled, almost underwater sound; we used it on a few other songs on the record too. I think we played the song three times and that was that.

All of the vocals on this record were recorded live with the band, which I found tremendously freeing after years of painstaking editing and overdubbing. There’s a brutality to this approach that encourages me to sing better. It’s mortifying knowing that if I don’t get the vocal we all have to play the damn song again. It’s a productive use of my people-pleasing disposition I feel.

O Fortune Teller

I think this song is about the desire for knowledge of the future, but the fear of the weight of too much terrifying information. I imagine every songwriter has felt that their time on Earth was accompanied by uniquely glorious and horrific human activities, but surely this moment has to be up there? It’s a song about carrying a lot of fear and hope about the world around at the same time.

I particularly love the string arrangements on this song; like spectres or fireflies or… something. It was recorded on an upright piano stuffed with felt to muffle the hammers which I think makes it feel particularly intimate.

My voice is very different in this song – it’s taken me a long time to find this special place for it as it has been quite an unwieldy beast in the past.

The Ladder

After almost two decades of writing songs exclusively about love and death, it’s nice to finally write something about home DIY equipment. This is unfortunately only partially true and it is ultimately, of course, a song about love and death.

This song was initially inspired by the crazed and mystical paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, who often painted ladders as routes to psychological exploration – it’s about the longing to transcend the relentless chaos of our world, I suppose. But don’t let that description get you down, it’s also a jaunty little number. The string arrangements were written to sound more like another member of the band, as opposed to something just laid haphazardly over the top. They rise and fall in unison with the band, and they are the star of this record I believe. This harks back to all the old records I grew up listening to in my youth, recorded in times before multitrack recording where the band would all be in one room gathered around a single microphone.

It was written on piano at home with my two-year-old daughter playing by and often underneath the piano, and the song came very quickly if I remember rightly. In fact, everything about this song arrived quickly for a bloody change.

We made the whole record in just 4 days which meant we rarely played each song more than once. This song was the first we recorded and this is the very first take, so it seemed like a great place to introduce people to this new record.

The Dream of Life

I originally wrote this song as the opening for a musical I’ve been working on for the last 8 or so years. It was going to be sung by an enormous foetus puppet floating in amniotic fluid in front of the hubble deep field.

Mortal Wound

This is a song about the quietly held hope that love is fundamentally a healing force. It’s by far the most bombastic song on the record, which is strange because, in many ways, it has the gentlest sentiment of them all. I like that the title sounds like a 90s goth band – it’s an intentionally misleading title which amused me anyway.

This song was recorded on a beautiful Steinway grand which had just been shipped down here to New Zealand from the Royal Festival Hall in London – I’m told it was the same piano that Nina Simone performed on at her infamously brilliant Meltdown festival performance many moons ago.

Anyway, I couldn’t help but think about her hands while I was playing it. 

The Sum

A gentle meditation on middle-age, I think.

Melancholy Moon

I’m hoping that an overarching narrative begins to appear on this record after repeated listens – this song marks a major transition in tone from the first half and, though still a melancholy beast, begins to walk a little lighter. I’ve also been trying to work Shiva The Destroyer into a song for years, so I’m happy I can tick that off the list now.

Victoria came up with the grand string intro which I love very much and reminds me of some saturated 1950’s melodrama. With the exception of the strings I’m playing every instrument on this song, like a modern day Dick Van Dyke.

Someone asked me recently which song I wish I had written and I rather surprised myself by answering Moon River, but I think I stand by that. Songs with moons in them – what’s not to love.

Concrete After Rain

 I wrote this after walking around Amsterdam one afternoon. It’s a very different kind of song for me – I haven’t created a character for myself, it’s just me going for a walk. There’s something very direct about it for this reason I think.

A Land Beyond

I don’t know where this song came from, I honestly don’t feel as though I wrote it. I feel like it comes from another time entirely, but I like that about it and it has a suitably stately quality, perfect for ending this album.

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:: stream/purchase Asphodels here ::

:: connect with The Veils here ::

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 © Katya Brook

Asphodels

an album by The Veils