Album review: The Velveteers – A Million Knives

Sometimes, bands make music to open a vortex to a long-lost era they didn’t get to live through. If they’re not careful, they can end up wearing the past like a cheap costume. This is not a problem The Velveteers have. The Boulder trio already made their vintage tastes known on 2021 debut Nightmare Daydream but found a way to bend them into a more unique shape – aptly for their unique set-up featuring two drummers on a conjoined kit.

Now on its follow-up, they imagine the heights they could stretch their scuzzy sounds to. Since their debut, they’ve ticked support slots with Smashing Pumpkins and Guns N’ Roses off their bucket lists, and their greater sense of experience certainly shows. In 2025, The Velveteers have one foot in a garage and another in a stadium.

In the beginning, they hold on tighter to their roots – opener All These Little Things is a rough-and-ready cloud of fuzz, sounding almost scuffed and worn with age thanks to its production. When they try on a little more groove, things get properly interesting. The sinuous Suck The Cherry, for example, is a wry rebuke of the industry greed that wore singer Demi Demitro down – 'Put my name into your mouth / Chew it up and spit out,' she dares. Later, Sweet Little Hearts dances between both those worlds without batting an eyelid, and they sound oh-so-cool doing it.

The Velveteers strut across many different dimensions, whether that’s through the means of dreamy ballads like the title-track, the cinematic, swaying Heaven or the hulking blues rock of Moonchild (with a sassy coda that demands that listeners get up and shimmy). It leaves a remarkable impression, so much so that even after a couple of plays, these songs feel like they’ve been in your life forever.

There’s plenty of bands who want to eschew shinier, more modern sounds in favour of winking towards what they perceive to be a golden age of music, but The Velveteers could well edge ahead of all of them.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Royal Blood, Starbenders, Venus Grrrls

A Million Knives is out February 14 via Easy Eye.