The Walnut Room

Laura Veirs

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On her third Nonesuch release, Saltbreakers, singer-songwriter Laura Veirs remains tantalized by the
mysteries and marvels of the natural world, filling her work with images, both precise and poetic, of the
ocean and the stars. But she digs even deeper this time into the vagaries of human nature, transforming
the turbulence of her own life, as well as her concerns about the hair-trigger state of the world at large,
into a collection of songs distinguished as much by their emotional urgency as by their often astonishing
musical inventiveness.
“Lyrically I drew more from my personal life on this record than with anything I’ve done in the past,” says
Veirs. She aims to convey the feeling, if not the specific circumstances, of an intense period in her per-
sonal life: the end of a long-term relationship, and the unexpected start of a new one, coupled with a
move from Seattle to Portland. She recalls this recent time as “a real emotional pendulum. I was swing-
ing from joy to despair and back again. I was bouncing off the walls.” She channeled her restless energy
into writing material that mirrors those dramatically swinging moods; it shifts from brooding to euphoric to
the hauntingly contemplative.
“I needed to say something truthful,” admits Veirs. “I wasn’t afraid to look at my dark side.” And she
doesn’t waste any time doing that, opening Saltbreakers with the lines, “Sorry I was cruel/I was protect-
ing myself/Drifting along with my swords out flying/Tattering my own sails/then I tattered yours too.”
“It was nice to be direct,” she admits. “But I still like to leave the songs open enough so that listeners
can create their own images, their own ideas. On my early records, I was much more direct. It was all
narrative. Then I went into a lot more obscure and poetic place. Now I’ve created a nice balance
between those things.”
Veirs recorded the album in Seattle, with band-mate Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Bill Frisell) once
again producing and mixing. Though she now calls her group Saltbreakers, it’s actually comprised of her
longtime compatriots, formerly known as the Tortured Souls — guitarist/bassist Karl Blau, keyboardist
Steve Moore and drummer Martine. The name change was a practical decision: “I didn’t want to talk
about that Tortured Souls thing anymore. It just got old,” Veirs, who also plays guitar, explains with a
laugh, remembering lots of bad jokes about the moniker.
Over the last three years, the band has traveled the world in support of Veirs’ previous Nonesuch
albums, Carbon Glacier (2004) and Year of Meteors (2005), assiduously cultivating an international fan
base. Veirs continues to praise the musicians’ strong interrelationship: “The band has gotten really
close. We’ve become like a real family. It’s felt like that for a long time, but it’s even more so now. Before
we made this record, I demo-ed the tracks at home using Garageband. Then we went on a short west
coast tour and played the new material. One of the big pay-offs of the way we work was then being able
to go into the studio and just play the songs.”