It may have been five years since her last album, 2013’s Warp and Weft, but Oregon-based singer-songwriter Laura Veirs has not been idle. As well as case/lang/veirs, 2016’s collaboration with kd lang and Neko Case, she has been raising two small children and hosting a regular podcast in which she discusses with her fellow musicians the trials of juggling work and family.
Veirs’s 10th solo album is perhaps her most satisfying yet, the deceptively simple songs sketched out on acoustic guitar or piano (the lovely The Meadow is particularly minimalist) and subtly embellished by her band and producer husband, Tucker Martine. Lyrically, there’s a theme of making the most of adversity: opener Margaret Sands is a profoundly moving lament seemingly for a friend who has died, yet whose memory lives on in the sounds of the sea (“now she’s married to the swell”). There’s a dreamlike quality to it, evoking Julia Holter. Elsewhere, When It Grows Darkest looks for glimmers of hope amid the Trump nightmare, and Heavy Petals is a salute to David Bowie. Best of all is Seven Falls, on which regret-laced childhood reminiscences are set to Jon Hyde’s pedal steel.
