15 August 2005

The Veils - Luminaire, London - Monday 15th August 2005

A first visit to a new-ish venue, the Luminaire in Kilburn. I actually used to live about 5 minutes' walk from this place, which has been comprehensively done up in the last few years. A nice little venue, albeit with a strange shape - rather like the 100 Club in that the area to watch the bands is very wide, and doesn't go very far back at all - 10 yards from the stage is the bar!

The Veils were a band I watched a few times a couple of years ago, mainly initially because a friend's friend was their (very good) guitarist. They were signed to Rough Trade, had their debut album produced by Bernard Butler, and all looked to be going well. That was until the singer/songwriter sacked the rest of the band, and appeared to go slightly mental.

The aforementioned singer was back with a new band this time. They were not a patch on the originals, the singer pranced about with a very Pete Doherty-esque hat, and some of the new songs sounded like there was a definite influence there - unfortunately without any of the (few) redeeming features of Mr Doherty. The old songs they did play were executed quite clumsily (although their quality still shone through occasionally), and the new ones were largely poor attempts at Libertines/Babyshambles rip off.

Definitely one to avoid in future, unless the singer looks like he has got his act back together. A real shame to see the shadow of a once-promising band.

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