Oh to Be Berenice 4/7/08

Every once in a while you encounter a song that upon first listen, completely wrecks you. It's what I imagine love at first sight to be like, but with the ears.

"The Leavers Dance" by The Veils, a band from New Zealand, is the latest tune to rip me to shreds in this way. I can't turn it off.

I happened upon it because I was watching some new detective show starring this facially blessed guy from Denmark that looks a bit like a young Denis Leary. The pilot episode featured music by Death Cab For Cutie and The Decemberists, and we all know when the music is that good from the get-go, the show is bound to be cancelled. It'll probably be axed before I finish my next three thoughts and replaced with some sort of reality show starring anyone whose teeth color matches their hair.

One of the episodes featured "One Night on Earth", also by The Veils, but I couldn't find it when I went to put it on my myspace play list. Instead I found "The Leavers Dance", which I fell into repeatedly, and will continue to do so as if there is some hope of finding the answers to all my questions hidden away in those notes somehow.

I think I'd like to hear it while driving from Ann Arbor to Detroit, Michigan. I want it to be snowing and at night so it looks like you're driving through the dark bottom of the ocean.

The Veils' sophomore effort "The Runaway Found" contains the more widely known "The Tide that Left and Never Came Back", which I have somewhere, but it's not near as good as LEAVERS.

The vocals at times harken back to an even more gravelly sounding Tom Petty meets the Waterboys, which isn't adorable, but fitting. Especially for a line like "it's not for our desires but our design that we all fall apart". I'm in it for the guitars mostly, but it's all love. It really is.

I wish my name was "Berenice". =)