Following last January’s Asphodels, The Veils return with Fragile World, an album that views the world through joy, pain and with the heartbeat of hope, veiled in vast dark beauty. Finn Andrews charts new fatherhood, life on the road and the bittersweet muse of loneliness, recorded live to reused tapes at Roundhead Studios, crafted and adlibbed, to a vital effect. The North Shore’s spooky Southern gothic son has circumnavigated the globe and finds life amongst the mundane, with the twists of fate and the poetic vibrancy of what will come next.

Opening track Aurora is a banger, starting sparsely, with piano played deliberately, resounding, like the footsteps you’re compelled to take on a journey you must make. When the drums join in, Andrews sings, ‘And I lose a little time, and I gain a little back,’ summing up the magic of flight – the give and take of timezones – and what is found as you’re swept up and away. It’s exciting to leave, and you have to leave, but you’re always leaving someone behind.

High Hopes has a vocal that could be Nick Cave, bassy, with the tremulous pronunciation of a man that knows what he sings is gospel-true, overwhelming. The instrumentation is lush, like building waves at a shore, with Finn’s love always more and bigger than him. The fact that it was written about his daughter makes it universe-sized; his life is changed, and nothing can be the same - it’s a revelation. There’s ambient conversation in the studio caught on tape as it’s been recorded live, which makes it confessional – nothing could be more true. A looped synthesiser and touch of vocoder hints at the future – no longer just his.

First single Lungs sounds like Bob Dylan if Dylan could sing, with a driving beat. It’s indie-folk that meets the sophisti-pop, and if you don’t dance to it, you’re not alive. Are You Awake Tonight yearns, with the pace of travelling the miles between you and who you miss. The vocoder sounds like Kavinsky’s Nightcall, cool, electro, the starkness of a lover’s prayer travelling the distance between. The piano and drums trace the journey, step after step.

Opening with wind chimes and continuing the driving synthwave sound, New Day is so nice lyrically; the evocation of a ‘wine-dark sky’ and an unfurled banner conjures Leonard Cohen and Homerian journeying. Robert Frost’s ‘miles to go before I sleep’ marches along with the drumbeat, and we’re all along for the ride; and it’s a joyful one. Little White Bird (Fragile World) is Finn Andrews in the style of Roy Orbison, full of wonder and the simplicity and majesty of a bird taking flight.

The Widening Dark has the wail and call of a Celtic ballad, like The Waterboys in contemplative mood, with subtle guitar and an organ in the background like night closing in. My Foolish Heart is country rock, with neat turns of phrases and the swagger of a man who knows he’s only human, but stridently so. The genre is filled with hearts behaving foolishly, and it’s wonderfully done. The track fades out with the ghosts of The Veils albums past playing distantly on the reused tape, like an overheard song from the radio of a passing car.

The closing track is a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s In This Heart, like a prayer with its confession and emotional rawness, and it keeps the gravity and beautiful spare solemnity. It’s a fitting end to an album about the prerogative, vastness and gorgeousness of our biggest drive and most complex one – the potentially melancholic, inherently hopeful and boundlessly eternal; love.

Other Credits:

Produced & mixed by Tom Healy

Engineered by Paddy Hill

Assisted by Tiare Kelly & Felix Miller

Recorded at Roundhead Studios

Mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud

Cover & sleeve design by Brendon Cleaver

Management by Reuben Bonner

Order Fragile World and The Veils merch here