Zunächst hieß es, der The Veils-Bandleader Finn Andrews sei zu müde und angeschlagen, um über seine 2 TV-Interviews hinaus noch weitere Interviews zu geben. Schade, hatte ich doch den Großteil meiner Fragen in Richtung Andrews formuliert. Doch eine Plauderstunde mit der überaus charmanten Bassistin Sophia Burn war mehr als ein „passabler Ersatz“. Und wie es der Zufall so will, sollte sich Finn Andrews wenig später doch noch dazugesellen.

 

 

 

Ich hatte bereits vor zwei Jahren das Vergnügen, The Veils live zu sehen. Damals hatten sie - in der nur mäßig besuchten - Szene Wien ihr gerade frischgebackenes Debütalbum „The Runaway Found“ im Gepäck. Von ihrem Auftritt blieben mir vor allem zwei Dinge im Gedächtnis, der einarmig spielende Drummer (ein Arm hing in einer Schleife) und der charismatische Frontman Andrews. „Von dieser Band werden wir sicher noch viel zu hören bekommen“, dachte ich mir damals. Nun, kurz danach lösten sich die Veils auf. Sophia Burn erzählt, wie es dazu kam: “Finn moved to London when he was 17, with songs, and was signed and kind of put together a band for those songs. It wasn´t kind of guys he knew, it was just people he met through various people. So I think he felt that it wasn´t what he wanted from the band. He wanted something more organic, more natural. I think he was too young, the touring and the songs kind of got him down and he wanted to get away from it all and start again. And so he did.” (lacht)

 

Der Songschreiber und gebürtige Londoner Finn Andrews zog sich daraufhin in seine Wahlheimat Neuseeland zurück, um der Band ein zweites Leben einzuhauchen. Dort wurde er in der Bassistin Sophia Burn, eine Freundin aus Highschool-Zeiten, und dem Keyboarder Liam Gerrard, wiederum ein Schulfreund von Burn, fündig, die fortan den Kern der neuen The Veils bilden sollten. In London, wo die Band beim hiesigen Rough Trade Label unter Vertrag ist, stieß das Trio schließlich auf Gitarrist Dan Raishbrook und Drummer Henning Dietz, unter deren Mitwirken zügig das zweite Album „Nux Vomica“ eingespielt wurde.

 

 

Burn: There is a music scene. I imagine this probably a bit like Austria. There is a scene but the biggest bands are still the ones that are international. I don´t know if it´s like here but there´s not a lot of money for music. It´s not like in England where there´s just millions and millions of dollars for music. (lacht) Everyone kind of does it for themselves in New Zealand. And you can do it there but not in the same way. You can´t really make a living of it. And if you have the opportunity to be signed overseas, it´s just good to take it.

 

 

Burn: No, that was Rough Trade, and they have been so brilliant. They really let Finn take time out and regather himself. And they have been fantastic for us, just letting us come together slowly.

 

 

Burn: Yes, that´s a bit complicated. You know, Finn and I know each other so well. And Finn was really wary of getting into something he did with his first band, you know with having people that were seen as very solid members and then there had been this big deal and they split up. When we first started playing with Henning and Dan we didn´t want to make it too solid. But now after one year it´s very much like a group of 5 - but with Finn, Liam and I as a core to it.

 

 

Burn: I heard that a lot with this record. I think as soon as you have a piano as a leading instrument you´re either Keane or Nick Cave. And well we´re not like Keane, so… but also I mean Nick Cave is Australian and was growing up in New Zealand. There aren´t many big artists from that end of the world. It´s Crowded House and Nick Cave, and that´s it. I am an enormous Nick Cave fan and I think he´s one of the greatest really. But you don´t wanna be compared to people. You hate it when someone always says “that band or that or that” but I also understand it. We´re a new band and the first thing I do when someone says “what is this band like?”, I say “oh they sound a bit like this other band”, you know.

 

 

Burn: Yes, I just feel like I would hate people to think that we just wanted to be Nick Cave. And also I guess because of the way the band is. You know Nick Cave is very much the frontman of the band. And so we are kind of set up. Finn is very Nick Cave-like, he is a very charismatic frontman. But also the thing I love about the Bad Seeds is that band. It wouldn´t exist if it wasn´t those specific musicians there. They´re all brilliant. So I guess I don´t mind but I hope no one sees us as a tribute band or anything like that. (lacht)

 

 

Burn: Yes, I mean Liam co wrote one song on the album. Just because the way this incarnation of the band started was with Finn going to New Zealand and he wrote a lot of songs before we started playing together, so they were kind of written. But also I mean I don´t have the songwriting ability that Finn does, at the moment. And I think we´ll kind of get to that where we all contribute but personally it´s not as important for me to say “I´m the songwriter” as long as i am part of something that is saying what I wanna say. Yes, we all contribute but at the moment Finn writes the songs. I don´t know what will happen with the next one. (lacht) We found out just yesterday that we are going to be making a third album in the next few months. So I think we´re all kind of thinking about how are we going to do that, getting a house somewhere together and doing it as a group. It will be very interesting.

 

 

Burn: Yeah, that´s soon. (lacht) Well, the album took a long time to come out. We made it last November. But they didn´t wanna release it during the Worldcup, so there were all kinds of delays.

 

 

Burn: We are in Europe for the next weeks and then we go to New Zealand for Christmas to do some gigs there and also in Australia and Japan. And then we will probably come back to Europe early next year and then make another album. (lacht)

 

FM5: I can imagine that you had to answer that question already a thousand times, but why did you decide to call your album “Nux Vomica”?

 

Burn: It´s a tree or a plant, it´s the plant you make strychnine from. It is also a homoeopathic remedy for digestion. There was a song called “Nux Vomica” before there was the album. And it was a song we all felt really strongly about from the beginning, we really loved it. And when we talked for a long time about what to call the album eventually it seemed to be a right thing. Because it´s like what you said about the songs being different, you know that tree is a harmful thing and a good thing in the same place. But then it´s also just a tree, so it´s not intentionally harmful or good it´s just you use it for different things. Unterbricht: Do you wanna join me for the last one Finn?

 

Finn Andrews (verschnupft und müde) setzt sich zu uns an den Tisch: Allright.

 

 

Andrews: For me all the extremes were before it really. It was written very quickly within a space of a few months and during that time everything was pretty calm. But the year that proceeded the writing of it was incredibly too much for us and I think that can be heard in it. Just with the last band breaking up and then finding a new band and like not being able to write for six months and then writing like an album that quickly that is full of all these reflecting kind of things. And there is a real duality in the record, like every choice, every kind of sentiment is coupled with this kind of incredibly blink.

 

Burn: The thing now with albums is that all albums have kind of a similar mood throughout the album. I mean life isn´t like that. You know in a day you can wake up felling terrible and then have something great happen, then something terrible. They´re just songs and they come from joy or sadness. But all joy and sadness have the other thing in them. So they are all the same thing really, it´s just intensity or lack off I guess. We all like a lot of music that varies from the really dark to the really poppy. I think it´s kind of lying to pretend that the music you make is only one thing when everyone wants to do all kinds of things all the time. 

 

 

Andrews: Yeah, I mean I feel for New Zealand really and London has a huge part of me in it as well. But New Zealand is always the place I kind of need to go to when things get a bit too crazy. Yes and it´s something like home, it´s that “home thing”.

 

 

Andrews: No no, I mean yes, it is a real place. You know it´s just about a very simple thing of people being born into the world and people leaving and this big house that we all pass the time in before we shuffle off and that´s what it´s about.

 

 

Andrews: Yes I´d like to. We´ll see how we go with that… (lacht)