Laura Veirs without Tucker Martine: hard to imagine. The US singer and songwriter has been making albums under the aegis of the indie star producer since 2000 – practically her entire career. Not much later, the two were a couple with two children. Martine developed his own universe parallel to his wife, producing the Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, My Morning Jacket, among others. But he found his most beautiful sounds for his wife: Veirs’ albums initially had a crisp sound (“Year Of Meteors”, 2005), later the darkened, transcendent, American sound prevailed. On their last work together, “My Echo” (2020), Veirs sang to washed-out playbacks of climate grief, the finitude of things and probably one last time of her husband, the big man whose hands teach the boxes to dance.
One quickly understands that the core of this music has always been the artist herself
Now the couple is going their separate ways. “Found Light” is primarily intended to answer the question of whether Laura Veirs can actually do that: make a record. She sings and plays at the same time for large parts of the songs, allowing for uncertainties and sometimes the technical production control. The backing tracks are more sparse, and you can occasionally hear how naked Veirs must have felt on these recordings. The whole album does not want to hide the fact that step by step something new must or may be created.
Bookish sound, the Spanish guitar, the unpretentious folk-pop melodies: you quickly realize that the core of this music has always been the artist herself. For example with the Latin American tempered “Autumn Song”. Or in “Ring Song”, in which the divorcee sells her wedding ring to the pawnbroker. “Maybe you’ll hear me on the radio/ Maybe I’ll see you in a dream.” Or in the bedroom recording “T & O”, in which the mother assures the children of her love. It apparently arose at the time when the marriage broke up. A wonderfully transcendent instrumental is called “Komorebi” – Komorebi is a Japanese term for sunbeams filtered through trees. A heart breaks, a heart finds new light.
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