The Veils' Finn Andrews has just released his debut solo album, One Piece At A Time. Ahead of an extensive nationwide tour, he sat down with Tony Stamp to discuss the album track by track.
The Veils frontman Finn Andrews recorded his debut solo record One Piece at a Time at The Lab studios in Auckland, with some of this country's top musicians.
Tiny Ruins' Cass Basil (bass), Alex Freer (drums), and Tom Healy (co-production) made up his band, with Reb Fountain and Nina Siegler on backing vocals, and string arrangements provided by Victoria Kelly.
Finn kicks off the South Island leg of his tour in Dunedin on Thursday, April 4. Details here.
Every song was tracked live, including vocals, with the entire band in the same room.
“It’s great not having a choice," Finn says, "Either you piss everyone in the room off by not doing a good vocal and making them all play it again, or you get it right.
"It’s amazing what that can do. And time’s against you, and all those things help create a sense of urgency.”
Finn discusses each track from One Piece at a Time with RNZ Music's Tony Stamp.
1. Love, What Can I Do?
Tony Stamp: The quote from you that accompanied the release of this song was that your dad often teaches you ‘a weird piano chord when he comes to visit’.
Finn Andrews: Dad’s a great piano player. A proper piano player. He was classically trained, and then played keyboards in various bands and for lots of different people. He taught some chords on piano when I was in my teens and then I went from there.
So yeah, I don’t really know what I’m doing on the piano. So when he comes to town I’ll ask for some new thing.
The song just sort of erupted out of that little chord. It’s not even a particularly tricky one, but it was a little springboard into something.
2. Stairs To The Roof
The lyrics that stuck with me were ‘it serves you right to suffer the ghosts of last night’s crimes’. What were you referring to?
I’ve been in London a long time. I was born in London. I have a bit of a weird relationship with it really, it’s been the source of a lot of pleasure and pain. It’s a song about the end of my time there.
It’s a bit of a love letter to London, but it has some melancholy with it. I’ve probably spent more time indoors there than anywhere. It’s there to write and work, and I’d only occasionally go out. I’m in a more sociable mode in New Zealand.
3. The Spirit In The Flame
Victoria Kelly provides string arrangements - how did you decide that she was going to be in charge of these?
You hear people talk about these magical accidents - it really was that. I’d just been back in the country for a few weeks to make the record, but there was this hole of who was going to handle the arrangements.
I’d heard people mention her name a few times over the years, so I met up with her in Grey Lynn, and got really drunk, and just had a fantastic conversation. She’s a really extraordinary person.
You’re never sure if ‘fantastic person’ is going to equal fantastic work. But I’ve found it generally does.
I sent her some really terrible recordings of the songs I thought we were going to record, and she just filled them with these beautiful arrangements that really transformed the whole spirit of the record.
And her friendship was really integral to getting through it as well. Stupendous person.
4. One By The Venom
The song is a list of ways to meet your maker, which you started writing on the tube. Can you remember the moment inspiration struck and you decided you wanted to write about death?
I’d had it in my head for a while that I’d like to write a great list song. Then it really was just passing the time noodling around on a train, and then became quite a compulsive thing.
I omitted about fifteen verses from it- those are just the highlights. I liked it being simultaneously rambly and concise. It’s only about two and a half minutes, but it packs a lot of imagery into it.
It’s about fourty seven deaths.
5. A Shot Through The Heart (Then Down In Flames)
‘If this is love then what comes after’ is a pretty devastating lyric. Is it about something specific?
Oh for sure. They’re all a lot more specific than I usually get on this. There’s the least distance… it’s a closer umbilical link, between…
Between reality and art?
Yeah, I guess. I’m not sure why that would be.
6. What Strange Things Lovers Do
This was the first time on the record I noticed some brass creeping in.
That was all very ad hoc. We sort of wrote an arrangement on the fly with Callum Passells (clarinet, saxophone), and Liz Stokes (The Beths) is on there as well, playing a bit of trumpet.
7. Al Pacino/ Rise And Fall
I’d always been told that my first words were ‘Al Pacino’. My dad had a thing about me having quite cool first words, so he used to say ‘Al Pacino’ to me a lot. I’d heard the story a lot anyway, and was never really sure if it was true.
Dad recorded me a bunch when I was a kid. So the beginning of that song is me saying ‘Al Pacino’ as a fairly small child. Apparently I’d been saying it far earlier than that.
8. Hollywood Forever
‘Hollywood Forever’ is the name of the main cemetery in Los Angeles. It has this infinity symbol on the sign.
When The Veils were recording Nux Vomica there we used to walk past it. Hollywood 'Forever'. That’s a really long time.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
9. One Piece At A Time
Why name the record after this particular song?
It’s quite an empty title, but it just fit. The song just felt like the centre of everything, and I just trusted that feeling.
It’s this weird atheistic gospel song, but it had a nice feel, and just felt like the core that everything else rotated around.
10. Don’t Close Your Eyes
It’s a nice little song, it seemed like a good closer. A gentle little beast.
It does feel like a comforting pat on the back.
It is. It’s good to send everyone off with a pat on the back: ‘you got through it’.
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