The Veils – The Scala, London – 21/9/09
4/5
By: Lawrence Diamond
So I was sat on the tube yesterday reading the rather wonderful Stool Pigeon newspaper on the way back from seeing some friends and watching a Ramones DVD with pizza and cola. The editorial was basically three separate diatribes about how awful the people in control of the music media are and how the whole world is going to hell in a massive corporate-cock rock-download-ringtone-shaped hand driven cart. It was very very funny, and hey maybe it’s true.
Whatever its wrongs and rights it clarified something I’ve been thinking for quite some time. That basically all the gas and air that whistles round bands and artists, ultimately, means very little. OK there are plenty of people out there who go and see bands so that they can say “I WAS THERE” before anyone else. And there are people who will only buy a record if it’s at the front of the HMV racks with a big yellow sticker saying “This is the best noise since Mozart first built a piano from Bachus’s very own voice box”. But for those of us who hold records close to our hearts, who choose music for the effect it has on us, and the truths it stirs up inside us, this gas and air, and those people who follow it, should affect us not. For me 1000 articles is not going to make a record please my ear when I hear it. It’s not going to make my heart stop, or my feet move or a little memory inside me twitch and flicker in my mind and emerge at the surface begging for some air that it has so long been denied. I would much rather watch a band I loved in front of 6 people, than with 10,000 people who thought they were maybe watching some history.
But surely all this is obvious. Well yes, but I kept thinking about it when I was stood at the crowd for The Veils headline show at the Scala on the first wet Monday evening of winter. The 300 or so people in that room were not there to see the future of music (and I’m not to say this wonderful band won’t be that), they weren’t there to prove something to themselves about their style and taste. No, they were there to hear the songs and see the sights of a band committed to making a beautiful heartbreaking racket. A band that everyone in that room was a little bit in love with. Maybe they’d have a sing along, maybe they’d have a cry, maybe they’d think about someone they hadn’t seen for a while and they really should call, or maybe they’d think about someone they hadn’t seen for a long time and they couldn’t call anymore. That’s why I went, and I did all those things.
Sure parts of the gig weren’t slick and it wasn’t a “perfect show”. At times lead singer Finn Andrews seems so tortured by his own music that it becomes an uncomfortable experience to watch. Sometimes I felt like saying, you know, come on buddy it really can’t be that bad. At other times the momentum that a songs built was dissipated by a too lengthy guitar change, or discussion over set lists, when the truth is one or two slick rock and roll segues could have pushed the audience to higher planes. But you know what, who gives a flying monkey horse! No one else was thinking these things , they were just thinking, “Gosh I love these songs, I love this gentleman’s voice” and maybe a couple of boys were thinking “Man, the sound the guitar player is making is bloody awesome, is that a vintage Gibson I wonder?” and that’s ok. Hey maybe even some of the girls were thinking “Is that Finn single, maybe if I buy him a glass of wine it’s me he’ll be writing about this time next year?” but that’s ok too.
The truth about it all is that if you’re a fan of the Veils albums, (and to my mind you really should be) then you would have loved this show. It wasn’t at the edge of the zeitgeist, it wasn’t the perfect expression of 21st century guitar music. No, it was 4 people making a beautiful racket and making the world a better place for it. So let the rest of the world go eat itself, find bands you love, hold them close, keep them close, trust them, and hopefully they’ll reward your heart and ears in a way The Veils did for me on Monday night.
Artists in this article: The Veils
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment