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wednesday, february 24, 2010, 6:41 am saving the world from bad music since last wednesday. WEDNESDAY | ARCHIVE | PEP SQUAD | MAILING LIST | GEAR | REQUEST LINE | ROCK DOC | CONNECT |
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laura veirs came to portland
by way of seattle, by way of colorado (where she grew up). in fact, she
says her colorado
upbringing provided much of her songwriting inspiration. actually as a child
she didn’t really focus on music; she casually listened to whatever was playing
on the radio at home. she really didn’t start listening to music until college, where while studying geology and mandarin chinese she formed a feminist punk rock band called “rair kx!”. after graduating, while on a miserable chinese geological expedition, she began writing songs to pass the wretched boredom. ever since then, according to richie unterberger, with longtime bandmates karl blau and steve moore she has created “personal songs of romantic intoxication, everyday vignettes, and occasional social commentary that are often heavy on introspection and intense character scrutiny.” to step back to 1999, she self-released her debut album laura veirs, recorded live featuring just her and guitar. since then, she has released five additional lp’s, all produced and mixed by tucker martine (producer to sufjan stevens, the decemberists and bill frisell). her most recent album, the stripped down july flame surfaced january 12, 2010 which the decemberists colin meloy called (in 2009, before the album released) ''the best album of 2010.” according to npr’s bob boilen, “she was in a writing slump going into this record, so she challenged herself with odd tunings on her nylon-string guitar. she dug deep inside for inspiration, did away with her full band for most of the album and wrote many of these tracks in her barn in portland, oregon.” the album was finally recorded and mixed at laura and tucker’s home. said jim james of my morning jacket: laura is like the queen bee and my ear is her hive; she nests and makes honey in the hairs of my cochlea. sounds dirty, but it's not. click here for a bunch of songs hosted on rhapsody. click here for a january 09, 2010 weekend edition story from npr . click here or a set recorded by wxpn for world café. click here for a 2006 set recorded by npr. click here and here for interviews and sets recorded by kcrw for morning becomes eclectic from november 15, 2005 and april 17, 2003 respectively. don't forget, the album cover image always links to sample songs and the band's image to their website. check here to see if laura veirs has any gigs scheduled near you. as always, please buy this album from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like wal-mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand). incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the united states. that my friend, bites. laura veirs is like honey. if you agree, please spread the word (about the band and this site). don't worry if you missed the yeasayer profile from last week: here it is.
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