Finn Andrews Shares Solo Album Details + Performance Video
November 27, 2018 BY Nettwerk
Finn Andrews releases a performance video for his latest single, “A Shot Through The Heart (Then Down in Flames).” Filmed at Finn’s recent debut solo show in Auckland, New Zealand, The Veils frontman performs the track at a grand piano, backed by a band featuring Cass Basil & Alex Freer (of Tiny Ruins), Reb Fountain, Emily Giles and Jess Hindin.
Watch + Share “Shot Through The Heart (Then Down in Flames)”:
Finn has also confirmed details of his long awaited solo album One Piece At A Time, out March 22, 2019 via Nettwerk. Highlights include the longing of “Love, What Can I Do?” and its dramatic opening chord—taught to Andrews by his father, no less, which begins the record and immediately sets the tone. The take was recorded entirely live without Andrews wearing headphones, as he wanted the song to feel as much like playing a live show as possible. “One By The Venom” belongs to a songwriting sub-genre Andrews adores—the list song—and its onslaught of doom scenarios provides the perfect canopy under which the band members play off one another. Elsewhere, the aforementioned “A Shot Through The Heart (Then Down in Flames)” and “The Spirit In the Flame” show off the variety of Andrews’ song writing, letting his voice light the path. As the album closes with the hopeful “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” it is clear that One Piece At A Time is a necessary step both for fans of the artist’s work as well as the artist himself.
“I felt this record had been brewing for a long time, and there was a palpable sense of relief in finishing it, which I don’t often get,” says Finn. “This record marks a change in me. I feel like it’s taken me somewhere else. That’s kind of the spooky element of making albums: you think you’re making them but really they’re making and shaping you. I’m somewhere else now thanks to them, and it’s hard to know where they’ll leave me in the end. I had something I felt I really needed to say, and I think for once I managed to say it. I do feel a small sense of pride in that.”
Since signing a record deal at 16, Finn Andrews and his band The Veils have released 5 albums together, appeared in David Lynch’s reboot of Twin Peaks, as well as on soundtracks by luminary film directors Tim Burton and Paolo Sorrentino. It was while writing 2016’s acclaimed Total Depravity that the New Zealand-raised musician realized a different streak was beginning to emerge. Fueled by the end of a relationship, Andrews took some time out from London and from The Veils, and returned to New Zealand to begin work on his solo album.
“I’d been writing songs while I was making these Veils records, and I knew they didn’t quite fit into that world,” Andrews says. “I needed to leave London. It was making me sick and I needed to get out, my relationship had broken down, so I went back to New Zealand. I had a feeling I’d be able to find the right people there to make the album, and it was as far away as I could go from where I was before, which felt necessary as well.”
The songs here are more personal and self-exploratory than anything Andrews has previously attempted, an effort he says that wasn’t necessarily deliberate but more a result of circumstance. “The last Veils records had a lot of writing from other perspectives; I’ve always enjoyed putting myself somewhere else—the truck driver, the axolotl – but this one has a lot less of that and a lot more from… well, from me I guess. It’s always been personal, so it’s a different way of getting at the same thing. Honestly I don’t exactly know why it’s different this time, or why these songs have a different feeling, but they do.”
In addition to the songs’ subject matter exposing more of his life than before, Andrews also admits that their arrangements allowed for less to hide behind, showcasing him in a different way. Dominated by Andrews’ voice, the ten tunes here place him firmly front and center. The resulting album is one of Andrews’ most profound and intimate pieces of work. Recorded entirely live at The Lab in Auckland, and engineered and co-produced by Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins), the band includes Andrews on vocals, piano, and guitar; Cass Basil on electric and upright bass; Alex Freer on drums; Healy on guitar; Reb Fountain and Nina Siegler on backing vocals; with sprawling string arrangements by Victoria Kelly.
One Piece At A Time is out March 22, 2019 on Nettwerk.
Track Listing:
1. Love, What Can I Do
2. Stairs to the Roof
3. The Spirit in the Flame
4. One by the Venom
5. A Shot Through the Heart (Then Down in Flames)
6. What Strange Things Lovers Do
7. Al Pacino / Rise and Fall
8. Hollywood Forever
9. One Piece at a Time
10. Don’t Close Your Eyes
The One Piece At A Time album art (left) is a photo of Finn Andrews as a child.
