Album Review: Laura Veirs - July Flame

And so winter brings another album written around the turn of seasons, as everybody’s-favourite-artist-ever-to-use-‘spelunking’-in-a-song, Laura Veirs, releases her seventh album in the new year on Bella Union (and her own label, Raven Marching Band Records in the States).

“Drenched in wood-smoke and sunlight”, July Flame is produced by boyf Tucker Martine of Crane Wife/Hazards Of Love fame, and whilst much has been made of the progression from major label to self-release and the stripped back minimalism of the new music, the main strength of the album is not fewer instruments, but that the sound is less cluttered, more delicate. Although she has described this album as “sparse”, and “music that hits you in the gut”, this does her an injustice. Visceral as the songs are, there is certainly a lot of the cerebral about both the lyrics and arrangement. Rarely does Veirs write choruses, preferring instead to rely on the ebb and flow of an abstract lyric on the top of finger-picking and a repeated refrain. She has in the past reiterated the mantra of the pop songwriter, that her lyrics are open enough to appeal to everyone on a different level, but this seems to be slightly misguided, as Veirs’ songs are far from generic, and one could question the mass appeal of re-working Rimbaud poems in folk form. But this is what sets her apart – her oddity, her uniqueness.

Having said this, good old Jim James, vying with Conor Oberst for ‘collaboration-whore of the year’ award, steps in to offer some ethereal backing parts and harmony. Of the singer, James says “Laura’s like the queen bee and my ear is her hive; she nests and makes honey in the hairs of my cochlea.”* Although clearly a fan, James’ cameo isn’t just for the production credits. The harmony is layered beautifully over and around her vocals, and is both a response as well as a complement to them. The album’s title refers to the July Flame peaches bought from a farmer’s market in Oregon on a hot day in 2008, and the songs were produced in the following year or two that Veirs spent teaching guitar and inventing “oddball tunings” in Portland. She really does have a lovely voice, and one would be hard pressed to listen to the album without becoming, if nothing else, rather fond of her. Colin Meloy, everybody’s-favourite-artist-ever-to-use-‘ventricles’-in-a-song, describes July Flame in typically whimsical fashion as “the best album of 2010″. Whatever happens, one dearly hopes that 2010 will produce albums equally as endearing, well thought out, and interesting as this.

*N.B. You know his cochlea is totally hairy.