Alt rock trio Veins are the band you might have missed but certainly shouldn’t have. Their music is full of ethereal vocals and guitar sounds with a good measure of drums thrown in. Fans of City and Colour, Muse and Interpol will want to get involved.
So just how did Veins get to find their distinctive sound? The following records could have provided some inspiration for sure. The band get stuck in to our desert island discs with some excellent choices.
Siamese Dream – Smashing Pumpkins
We’re taking Siamese Dream to the island because it was a massive influence on Stevie’s (vocal/ guitar) early musical taste. He describes it as the most inspiring album of his youth; purely because of the quality of the songwriting and the fact it was so different sounding to other bands of the time. The production and use of layers is also something we’ve been influenced by in the studio.
Radiohead – OK Computer
We’ve chosen OK Computer because it acts as the bridge between Radiohead being a straight up indie/rock band and the experimental direction in which they headed. What’s interesting for us is the way it changed ideas about what a guitar-based band can sound like. That is something we are very mindful of in our writing, creating atmospheric layers and textures on top of the backbone of the bass and drums to create something that we hope is a little more interesting that your traditional three piece rock band.
Deftones – White Pony
Scott (bass) and Dan (drums) come from metal backgrounds and whilst Veins is not a heavy band we use that past experience and influence to make our sound as huge as possible. When we started we weren’t really sure what direction we were going to go in musically but the first thing we decided was that we wanted it to sound huge but also dynamic. White Pony sums that up perfectly.
Sigur Rós – Takk…
Sigur Rós are the masters of creating ethereal, powerful music. Each album feels like it’s the soundtrack to wherever it is being played, so this record will be perfect on the island to soundtrack our new lives as castaways. Once we’d decided we wanted to sound huge, that quickly progressed into wanting to create an epic almost cinematic/soundtrack feel to the music.
After our first gig someone described watching our set as like ‘watching the end of every film ever’ so hopefully we’re on the right track.
The Cure – Disintegration
This will be the album we play on the days the dark storm clouds loom over the island. It’s an album that manages to feel massive and sparse yet intimate and claustrophobic all at the same time. It’s moody and full of tension throughout. Again, that sense of atmosphere is something we all love in Veins and the way in which The Cure find balance between that and their hooky poppier songs has a massive appeal for us. On Disintegration ‘Lovesong’ is the beautiful beacon amongst all the gloom.