The Veras Something To Say
The Veras are four fellas making music inspired by all the great music from the 50s right up to about 5 minutes ago, and now have Something To Say... Drummer Dan Taylor, who put forward an idea of recording a song, explains; The Action are, quite simply, ineffably ace, and how they never had huge success back in the day is beyond belief. 'Something To Say' is one of a batch of songs which were only really recorded as demos around '67 and '68, for a possible LP which was never released at the time. They surfaced in the mid-90s. For me, a number of the songs have a real melancholy feel about them, which I love, but still with the trademark fabulous Action vocals and outstanding musicianship. 'Something To Say' is my favourite, and when we were discussing tracks to record at our next studio session, I put it forward, mainly for selfish reasons as I wanted to have the chance to play it, but the boys all agreed straight away as they also think it's a smashing track. We've liaised with The Action's drummer Roger Powell throughout the process, including on the sleeve art design too. I like to think we've done justice to the beautiful songwriting and playing of him and his Action bandmates, but added our own personality to it, in particular bringing out the funkiness of the song without smothering the delicate mournfulness of it. The track was recorded by Morgan Nicholls, former bass-player of late 80s/early 90s indie-pop big hitters The Senseless Things and who has gone on to work with Muse, Gorillaz, Lily Allen and The Who. Morgan engineered and produced the tracks and created the accompanying video for the song. Morgan is the son of Billy Nicholls, a solo artist on Andrew Loog Oldham's trailblazing Immediate Records label in the 60s. 'Something To Say' is backed with an original Veras composition, a slice of new-wave tinged power-pop recorded in the same session and entitled 'What I Got When I Get Away'.