My Echo Laura Veirs

• 1Freedom Feeling03:20
• 2Another Space And Time04:35
• 3Turquoise Walls02:39
• 4Memaloose Island03:35
• 5End Times03:07
• 6Burn Too Bright03:00
• 7Brick Layer02:31
• 8All The Things03:28
• 9I Sing To The Tall Man03:10
• 10Vapor Trails04:32
• Total Runtime33:57

Info for My Echo

My Echo is Laura Veirs' eleventh studio album, and includes appearances and features from Jim James, Bill Frisell, Karl Blau, Matt Ward and others. Laura says: "My Echo is “my songs knew I was getting divorced before I did" album. My conscious mind was trying as hard as I could to keep my family together but my subconscious mind was working on the difficult struggles in my marital life. I was part of a “Secret Poetry Group”that met and wrote poems monthly for a year during the writing of this record. Many of my poems turned into songs for this album. By the time the album was being mixed last fall, my ex-husband/producer Tucker Martine and I had decided to go our separate ways. We were a great musical team for many years but we struggled to be compatible in our marriage and family life and that struggle is reflected in this album.

In this new batch of songs I imagine escaping from some sort of prison or cage. Advancing age, the confines of domesticity, our oppressive government and the threat of the apocalypse permeate these songs.In these songs my heart craves certainty and permanence but none is to be found. It’s an album about disintegration. It reveals my artist’s intuition at work."

"Laura Veirs is far from the first singer/songwriter to make an album informed by the breakup of a romantic relationship. However, she's one of the few to make a breakup album produced by the person who inspired it. Veirs and noted indie producer Tucker Martine had been married for 19 years when they announced they were divorcing in November 2019, and 2020's My Echo was recorded with Martine at the controls (as he had done with most of her albums), created as their marriage was at the point of collapse. The non-album single "I Was a Fool," which she debuted on Valentine's Day 2020, was a more blunt and emotionally naked musical response to the end of her marriage; My Echo was recorded before "I Was a Fool" but released eight months afterwards, and it's clear that that song's discontent was real and present as this material came together, even if it was less pointed. The opening song, "Freedom Feeling," begins with the words "I don't know where I am going, but I've got you by my side"; however, as the tune plays out, those words feel ominous rather than comforting, the sound of someone searching for a freedom they don't honestly feel. Elsewhere, "Turquoise Walls" finds her wrestling with the fear she's been betrayed, "Burn Too Bright" documents a moment where the distance between them becomes all too obvious in the studio, "Brick Layer" obsesses on the weaknesses that compromise her carefully constructed veneer of strength, and "All the Things" is a litany of the decay and collapse of things of her control. My Echo is all about the emotions that begin to break through the surface when love turns bad, and the soft emotional reserve of Veirs' voice articulates the unease in her heart and soul with gestures that are subtle and telling at once; when she sings "Come and rest awhile in my song/Nothing's wrong" in "I Sing to the Tall Man," she makes it obvious how false that is without tipping her hand with histrionics. And if Veirs and Martine were falling out as they made this, he gave her a lovely going-away present with My Echo, which is masterful in the ghostly beauty of its arrangements and spectral soundscapes. The album creates beauty out of fear and uncertainty, and it's among Laura Veirs' most personal and satisfying works to date." (Mark Deming, AMG)

Laura Veirs

Laura Veirs
A prolific songwriter for nearly twenty years, Laura Veirs proves the depth of her musical skill on her tenth solo album, 'The Lookout'. Here is a batch of inimitable, churning, exquisite folk-pop songs; a concept album about the fragility of precious things.

Produced by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine, Veirs' longtime collaborator, 'The Lookout' is a soundtrack for turbulent times, full of allusions to protectors: the camper stoking a watch fire, a mother tending her children, a sailor in a crows nest and a lightning rod channeling energy.

"'The Lookout' is about the need to pay attention to the fleeting beauty of life and to not be complacent; it's about the importance of looking out for each other," says Veirs. "I'm addressing what's happening around me with the chaos of post-election America, the racial divides in our country, and a personal reckoning with the realities of midlife: I have friends who've died; I struggle with how to balance life as an artist with parenting young children."

Written and produced on the heels of Veirs' acclaimed album with Neko Case and kd Lang ('case/lang/veirs'), 'The Lookout' integrates the fluency of collaboration with Veirs' notorious work ethic. The twelve songs on the album are the result of a years' worth of daily writing in her attic studio in Portland, Ore.

"Twenty years ago when I was just starting out with my punk band, it never occurred to me to write five versions of a song," says Veirs.

"I've learned to see how malleable lyrics and melodies can be. I have more tools as a musician so I write many versions of songs until I find the right fit." Such range is demonstrated on the operatic vocals of 'The Meadow' and the intricate finger picking on 'Watch Fire.' 'The Lookout', the album's title track, is an ecstatic anthem to trusted relationships.

'The Lookout' draws on the talents of a time-tested crew of musicians: Karl Blau, Steve Moore, Eli Moore, Eyvind Kang and Martine.

Says Veirs, "These guys are a good hang, ego-free and wonderful players who just want to serve the songs." Sufjan Stevens and Jim James provide guest vocals.

For Martine, who fell, almost two decades ago, for Veirs' unique sound after listening to a tape cassette she'd sent him in the mail, this album reflects a bar that keeps getting raised. Both familiar and strange, 'The Lookout' gets better with repeated listens, warming to the skin like a cherished saddlebag, critical for the journey ahead.

This album contains no booklet.