The Veil (Deluxe Edition) Simian Ghost

• 1 Float 02:11
• 2 Cut-Off Point 03:41
• 3 A Million Shining Colours 03:23
• 4 Echoes Of Songs (For Trish Keenan) 04:23
• 5 August Sun 02:49
• 6 The Ocean Is A Whisper 03:04
• 7 I Will Speak Until I´m Done 02:17
• 8 Secret Meadow 03:02
• 9 Fight Even 01:56
• 10 Hidden In Your Leaves 04:40
• 11 Be A Good Kid 03:22
• 12 Scattered And Careless 03:41
• 13 Never Really Knew 03:41
• 14 Strange Light 03:42
• 15 The River Ouse 02:02
• 16 Endless Chord 03:27
• 17 Summer Triptych 03:43
• 18 The Veil 02:26
• 19 Echoes In Your Heart 03:42
• Total Runtime 01:01:12

Info for The Veil (Deluxe Edition)

Like some sort of musical spectre, Sweden’s Simian Ghost haunt the grey area between ‘alternative’ and ‘pop’, offering the nuance and depth you’d expect from the nebulous former genre combined with the instant appeal of the latter. As if to exemplify this, their newest album The Veil is pretty long for a pop record, with its 18 tracks running to just over an hour.

It would be a shame if that proved to be too daunting for some listeners, as The Veil has a lot to offer. After introductory number ‘Float’ drifts by serenely, the album kicks in with ‘Cut-Off Point’, which sounds like the sort of pop song The Horrors might write if they were infatuated with The Beach Boys. ‘A Million Shining Colours’ goes back even further in time, calling to mind Buddy Holly - just listen to those lovelorn, sighing vocals and drawn-out “bay-bee”s for ample proof. And while ‘Echoes Of Songs (for Trish Keenan)’ wears its influence firmly on its sleeve, it does manage to capture a little of Broadcast’s ethereal melancholy - not as a direct sound-a-like, but rather in spirit.

One might expect a song entitled ‘August Sun’ to be a similarly chirpy number, but it’s here that the record throws a curveball - it is, instead, a stark acoustic number documenting the moment that a relationship ends, and the first real eye-opener to the often downbeat subject matter that dwells below the surface of these songs. The effortlessly bittersweet pop of ‘Never Really Knew’ stands out as another prime example, its subtly funky bass combining with twinkling synths to create a breezy backdrop to a relatable tale of having your heart broken for the first time. ‘Scattered And Careless’ mixes summery guitar pop with existential fear (“And I know/that we never really find what we are looking for.”), while beneath ‘The River Ouse’s propulsive jam - think ‘Sea Within A Sea’ - lies a battle with depression (“I feel it coming every day/brings me closer to the point/where it breaks”). Immediately following that is ‘Endless Chord’, which sees vocalist Sebastian Arnström channeling Sigur Rós into a heartbreakingly sincere moment of hopefulness against the odds.

By contrast, the beautiful ‘Hidden In Your Leaves’ depicts a place where fantasy and reality collide in a moment of intimacy (“And your hair flows over my back/into my dreams.”), the song’s Fleet Foxes-esque harmonies adding to its escapist charms. There are more upbeat moments on the album too - ‘I Will Speak Until I’m Done’ is a breathless, shimmering slice of shoegaze-pop that flashes past in less than two and a half minutes, while ‘Summer Triptych’ captures a similar feeling later on in the record. There are a few noticeably weaker tracks, however - typically, they’re the ones that don’t get off the ground until they’re over halfway done (‘The Ocean Is A Whisper’), or burst into life too late (‘Be A Good Kid’). Elsewhere, the instrumental tracks ‘Secret Meadow’ and ‘Strange Light’ serve their purpose as dividers, but they feel more like decorations than additional meat on the bones of the album.

In all honesty though, the sprawling length of the record feels like the result of raw ambition rather than a failure to self-edit, for The Veil defies expectations at every turn. The journey that Simian Ghost take the listener on may sometimes be a meandering one, but it’s ultimately a fulfilling experience. (Paul Faller, Drowned In Sound)

Sebastian Arnström, vocals, music

Studio / Live: Erik Klinga, Mathias Zachrisson, Maja Agnevik, Wilhelm Magnusson

Simian Ghost
initially began as the solo recording project of former Aerial frontman Sebastian Arnström. His 2011 debut Infinite Traffic Everywhere was a mix of fragmented post-rock and dreamy chillwave that quickly became a critical favorite in his native land. He quickly followed up with the seven-song EP Lovelorn that same year before expanding the group to include members Erik Klinga and Mathias Zachrisson. Now working as a trio, the band wrote and recorded their second LP, Youth, in 2012 which again fared well critically across Europe leading to several U.K. live dates and sessions for the BBC. The band continued to release new music, including the 2012 EP Autumn Slowmo and a smattering of singles. Prior to the 2014 LP The Veil, Arnström again expanded the lineup to include vocalist Maja Agnevik and bassist Wilhelm Magnusson. That same year their second LP, Youth, was reissued with five additional tracks by American label Red Eye Transit.

Booklet for The Veil (Deluxe Edition)