With Flip Grater, Al’s Bar, 12 January 2007. Review by Fran Miller-Pezo, photos by Chris Andrews.
The Veils are the project of ex-pat Aucklander Finn Andrews, who left New Zealand around age sixteen to pursue a musical career in London. Signing to the legendary Rough Trade label, he released a debut album, Runaway Found, with a band assembled around his songs. After touring that record he returned home, recruited school friends Sophia Burn (bass) and Liam Gerrard (keyboards), and rebuilt The Veils around them. The current lineup — rounded out by Henning Dietz on drums and Dan Raishbrook on guitar — played to what was possibly the biggest crowd Al’s Bar had seen.
Local singer-songwriter Flip Grater opened from Christchurch. The large, chatty crowd made things difficult — her lovely voice frequently lost to the noise — but she pushed through and finished with a louder, more forceful song that finally drew the room’s attention, earning a warm reception.
The packed bar had been sustained through the wait by a soundtrack of Tom Waits and Edith Piaf. When The Veils finally took the stage they opened immediately with the title track from their then-current album Nux Vomica. Their pop-rock carries a thread of country — not the bad kind, but the kind that makes you want to move, hampered only by the lack of room. That urge to dance was strongest during the punchy “Jesus for the Jugular” and “Pan”, two of the set’s clear highlights. The encore, “More Heat Than Light” from Runaway Found, was the most overtly big-rock moment of the night.
The intimate, crammed atmosphere of Al’s Bar was inseparable from what made the show work. With the band’s Big Day Out performance imminent at the time, it was hard not to wonder how these songs would translate on a stadium stage.
