July Flame
Album | Laura Veirs
13 finger-picked acoustic tracks of wide-eyed, lovestruck wonder
The world of guitar-strumming, female singer/songwriters can be a depressingly homogenous place. It's a world crowded with lots of competent musicians singing pretty, if ultimately totally forgettable, songs that all kind of sound the same. In such a universe, Laura Veirs is a breath of fresh air. On July Flame, Veirs scales back her songs to their fingerpicked bones, unveiling 13 tracks of wide-eyed, lovestruck wonder. Veirs' somewhat deadpan vocal delivery and penchant for graduate school poesy can be an acquired taste, but when her songs work (and they mostly all do), they are marvels of simplicity. It's hard to imagine anything more melodic or romantically beguiling than a song like "I Can See Your Tracks" or "Life is Good Blues." Veirs clearly isn't trying to subvert any genres here or turn the world on its head, but she seems OK with that. When she sings "I want nothing more than to dance with you" on "Little Deschutes", one is compelled to agree. Sometimes a pretty song and a good dance partner is more than enough.
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