The breakup album is commonplace in music – just ask Adele – but albums about what happens after the initial trauma are less of a thing. Portland singer-songwriter Laura Veirs made her last long player, My Echo, while her marriage to producer Tucker Martine was disintegrating, a situation made more complex by the fact that, as with all of her albums, the songs were recorded by him in the studio that they co-owned.
Veirs has worked with others before, notably on an excellent 2016 album as a trio with k. d. lang and Neko Case, but Martine loomed largest. This time she worked elsewhere, producing herself together with old friend Shahzad Ismaily. Even so, the music is far from a glorious whoop of freedom. She still sounds entangled. “I am puzzling out our two lives apart,” she sings on Winter Winds, though the song is uncharacteristically rapid and rocky compared to her usual glacial, nature-infused indie folk. Time Will Show You sounds more like the style that should be familiar 12 albums in, which makes her sudden spitting of the F-word more startling. “It’s gonna be okay – wait,” she concludes.
