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.
It’s hard to tell that this is apparently the sound of her playing guitar and singing simultaneously for the first time on record – a welcome growth in confidence – but it’s away from her instrument and clear, crisp vocals that the biggest changes can be found. A spooky saxophone snakes around the plucked guitar of Naked Hymn. Ring Song is decorated with beautiful tumbling piano notes. Seaside Haiku sits on lo-fi electric guitar rumbles, while Eucalyptus is her strangest song yet, a skeletal sound underpinned by stuttering computer beats.
“I met a Brazilian who taught me to dance/He made me feel my second chance,” she sings, sounding like she’s moving on, though the song is still addressed to her ex, likening her experience to being crushed by a sudden falling branch. She sounds incredibly vulnerable on Sword Song, her wavering voice exposed with the barest accompaniment.
In the end, life stumbles on because it has to. Their children are a warm presence on the record – the simple, lovely T & O is titled for their initials. “You are the sunbeams of the house,” she tells them. And there was no question of her stopping making music because she can no longer do it the way she always did. As she reveals halfway through: “My bitter cold heart can’t help but sing.” Thank goodness for that.
