LAURA VEIRS | LIVE REVIEW
Festival Of Voice, St John’s Church, Canton, Cardiff, Sat 9 June
It’s another balmy summer’s night and the Stereophonics are blasting through the Canton air from their gig at the nearby stadium, but inside the sanctity of St John’s Church the pews are packed in respectful silence as support act Amaroun is baring her soul, saying how hard it was to come out as a gay African woman in a long-distance relationship. She’s in sympathetic company – I see a few same-sex couples between the stone arches, and an ultra-cute baby who both keeps the average age respectable and anchors the wide-eyed innocence of Laura Veirs’ set.
The church setting is perfect for Veirs’ music, with her band taking up a position just in front of the Chancel arch, floodlit in rich orange, purple, blue and red, a triple-gabled reredos visible at the altar behind them. They weave spellbinding music stitched from folk, country and indie from across her 10 albums, with a good proportion of tunes from The Lookout favoured while 2013’s Warp And Weft is overlooked. Even with plenty of contextual chat in between songs, they cram nearly 20 songs into around 80 minutes.
She has the audience rapt with the first two songs from her new LP, Margaret Sands and Everybody Needs You, before disclosing that she thinks this is her first UK tour in five years. Song For Judee, her one selection from the collaboration with KD Lang and Neko Case, is a showcase for her mastery of crafting beautiful harmonies from the darkness and the light, with Judee Sill’s life remembered by the lyrics “They found you with a needle in your arm, beloved books strewn around your feet” shading the chorus “You loved the sons of the pioneers and the Hollywood cowboy stars / You were just trying to put a hand to where we are”. The band almost skips a beat, just as my heart does on the soaring violin.
I Can See Your Tracks, from July Flame and the theme about hanging on to the memory of a lost relationship chimes heavily with the wreckage of my love life, the echo on her voice creating a ghostly choir which echoes up to the rafters. The wonders of nature and the universe are in her DNA, from her Colorado upbringing and learning the constellations from her physics teacher father, so it’s no surprise that two highlights here are When It Grows Darkest – a reference to hope springing eternal in the Trump era – and the stars being brightest in the dark, where the violin locks into a circular melody propelled by jazzy Talk Talk-circa-Spirit Of Eden drums; and the piano-led The Meadow, where her sonorous voice rings out like chiming glass. “We went to the meadow, and we knew it wouldn’t last, it was beautiful,” prompts rapturous applause.
Laura Veirs’ mastery of bucolic, life-affirming music is like the wonders of Planet Earth transformed into song.
words CHRIS SEAL photos JANIRE NAJERA
