Pitchfork

The Veils is, of course, a veil-- one for frontman Finn Andrews to lurk behind. Not only is he the lead singer/songwriter for this pop-noir outfit, he's also the only person to appear on both albums that bear the band's name, after a split with the London-based line-up that recorded 2004's The Runaway Found sent Andrew retreating to his childhood home of New Zealand to start the band anew for Nux Vomica. But if the Veils are a band in name only, Andrews has a good enough reason to use the alias: His father Barry is a founding member of XTC, and the younger Andrews has probably read too many Rufus Wainwright or Sean Lennon reviews that can't separate the prodigal son's work from that of their famous fathers.

Unlike those mentioned above, the Veils' parentage really is an irrelevant footnote-- though if you told me Finn's father was Nick Cave or Jeffrey Lee Pierce, then we'd have a more thorough discussion of heredity on our hands. To be completely reductive, Nux Vomica is the new Bad Seeds record that Cave has forsaken in favor of Grinderman, or the first Gun Club album to crack the UK top 20. It's a development that wasn't entirely anticipated by The Runaway Found, whose lush balladry posited the Veils as arch dramatists in the tradition of Dog Man Star-era Suede, post-Richey Manics and post-fame Pulp-- hearts firmly on sleeves, but with the spilled blood all cleaned up. Nux Vomica retains its predecessor's flair for the grandiose, but repositions the Veils as purveyors of a gothic Americana, inhabiting desert-stormy vistas that are just expansive enough to house the band's most valuable asset: Andrews' magnetic, outsize persona.

The parallels to Cave run from the superficial (the way both men enunciate the word "loooord") to the substantial, as Andrews shares Cave's preoccupation with crises of faith. But even at their most depraved, Cave's songs still portray moral redemption as an end to be, if not always achieved, then at least valued. Andrews speaks in more obvious metaphors-- "There's an angel at my table/ And a devil up my sleeve"-- but is more ambivalent about his belief in god, or even love; as the Celtic jaunt "Calliope!" argues, when unrequited romance turns requited, "what's there left to believe in?" For Andrews, this pervasive ennui is all the more reason for him to camp and vamp it up-- and so the domestic doldrums of "Advice For Young Mothers To Be" get dressed up in a deceptively cheery ska-disco; by contrast "Jesus for the Jugular" mocks organized religion using the theatrics of the pulpit, its taunting blues riff and thundering bass-drum lurch goading the singer into Black Francis hysterics. But instead of simply positing a god/devil dichotomy, Andrews deviously emphasizes their co-dependency, asking, "would the fox be as quick if he hadn't his hound?"

Such proselytizing is always more convincing when it's punctuated with big bangs, and the reconstituted Veils deliver them with such startling proficiency-- the spaghetti-western cavalry charge of "Not Yet", the lightning-crash clamor of "Pan", the horse-whipped guitar/organ shocks of the title track-- that they make more stately romantique turns like "A Birthday Present" and "One Night on Earth" sound like the work of a different, more typical Britpop band. But then Nux Vomica is so focused on the big picture, it never gets undermined by the small stuff.