Laura Veirs
Year of Meteors

(Nonesuch)

First Appeared in The Music Box, September 2005, Volume 12, #9

Written by John Metzger

Laura Veirs hails from Seattle, but she just as easily could have climbed down the side of a snow-capped, Scandinavian mountain. Her songs exude a sense of icy detachment to which the road tales outlined on her fifth outing Year of Meteors are remarkably well-suited. Although the 12-track set deals with the usual subjects of folk-rock troubadours — that is, relationships, distance, separation, and yearning — Veirs finds new ways to express them by placing her poetic turns-of-phrase within the kaleidoscopic textures of her atmospheric arrangements. The jagged guitars and sawing viola that slice through Black Gold Blues lend the tune an ominous angst, while the fragile loneliness of Spelunking’s acoustic melody is as haunted as it is beautiful. Elsewhere, the electronic flourishes that grace Fire Snakes seem to crystallize like frozen droplets of water upon a cold windowpane; Galaxies’ cosmic journey is fueled by its spiraling effects and wispy vocals; and Veirs nearly is consumed by the seductive chill of the heroin-laced Parisian Dream. In lesser hands, much of Year of Meteors might have drifted towards being plaintively precious, but in encasing her material within an array of strange nuances and unsettling sounds, Veirs maintains an edgy, off-kilter energy that is truly intoxicating.

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Ratings

1 Star:   Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 2005 The Music Box