In the summer of 2020, as the United States erupted into protests against police violence, Laura Veirs was on the front line, fist raised to the sky. Portland, her hometown of more than a decade, had become a crucible in the battle between the two Americas. This was where the Black Lives Matters demonstrations had endured the longest. And where the backlash was at its most brutal. From her vantage point, the fracture lines between Red State and Blue State were traced in blood.
“I was in the Wall of Moms,” says Veirs, referring to the collective of mothers who became a catalysing force in the George Floyd marches in Oregon. “We were getting pummelled by the Feds who were there to fight the protesters.”
Veirs sings about the Wall of Moms, and about the truncheons that came flying down, on My Lantern, a highlight from her new album Found Light. “Feet on the street, fists on the sky,” she croons in a warmly ominous voice that feels like a cousin twice-removed of Alanis Morissette or kd lang. “You give me hope, you are my lantern in the dark.”
As these two Americas clashed it was as if a nation was splitting down the middle. That divide has obviously been exacerbated following the US supreme court’s striking down of Roe v Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.
“Most states have ‘two Americas’. I think we could possibly be on the edge of a civil war,” says Veirs (48). “I wouldn’t mind, honestly. I feel it would better to just split off.”
Found Light isn’t really a political album. Or if it is, it’s about the politics of midlife and the challenges of love, loss and starting over. Veirs is freshly divorced from her former collaborator, the producer Tucker Martine. And that is a crucial context to Found Light, a darkly dreamy indie-pop rollercoaster that doubles as a celebration of re-engaging with the world as a single person.
She grappled with her divorce previously, on 2020′s My Echo. But where that album was a lament for what was gone, Found Light sees Veirs facing towards a new dawn. She spells this out on the closing number, Winter Windows, singing about the strength she takes from the women in her life. And about how she is filled with a sense of possibility as she looks around at her friends and is lifted up by their support and positivity (“now it’s up to me, the lightning I can do”).
“This is a new era. It’s me co-producing my first record. Me making all the creative decisions and writing about what comes after a divorce. It’s not about the divorce so much. I wanted to end on a loud note. In the past, it would have been a ballad to end. I didn’t want to finish that way. I wanted to end with a fire.”
Veirs doesn’t wish to present a romanticised portrait of her life. The unravelling of a marriage is difficult. She and her ex have two sons, aged 12 and nine. Of course it’s a challenge.
“It’s definitely not spoon-feeding you a happy ending,” says Veirs. “[It’s discussing] the actual, real-life complexity of going through a divorce with kids. Real hard stuff. That’s my job as an artist — to synthesise my actual life into music.
I was going through a divorce and trying to write. I didn’t like what I was writing. In the second year, I started to like what I was writing
Veirs and Martine were a romantic couple. They were also a musical partnership, in which, as her producer and drummer, he was largely in her shadow. Did this lead to tensions? “I just have moved on. It’s not an issue. I don’t even know if he’ll listen to this record. I don’t really care if he does. He’s on it. I talk about him. I talk about a lot of other people and a lot of other things.”
As if that wasn’t complicated enough, the pandemic was in full swing. A new life, a new career. And Veirs and her two kids stuck indoors like the rest of us. It was a lot.
“It was very challenging to be doing Zoom schooling and living in isolation from my community,” she says. “Everyone was [in that situation] — everyone had to figure it out. And going through a divorce on top of that, it’s extra hard. For the first year we were in lockdown I was going through a divorce and trying to write. I didn’t like what I was writing. In the second year, I started to like what I was writing.”
She regards herself as a prolific artist. That isn’t to say material always comes easily. Lockdown didn’t help. “I make an album every other year. But it requires a tonne of work. I don’t always find what I’m trying to get in the first year. Part of the reason in this case was that I did go through what I consider to be a traumatic experience. And when you are going through that you can’t necessarily write about it in that moment — you need about a year or two to be able to write well about it.”
Veirs was born slap-bang in the middle of Generation X in October 1973. She grew up in Colorado Springs, the second-largest city in Colorado, and went on to study geology at Carleton College, Minnesota.
College was also where she had her musical awakening, when she formed all-female quartet Rair Kx!
That group quickly sputtered out. By then, she’d been bitten by the bug. She was soon writing her own songs — indie rock with a folksy tinge, backlit with a punk intensity. Initially her career was a slow burn. But following her third long-player, 2003′s Troubled By the Fire, on which she was accompanied by veteran jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, she signed to Nonesuch, the boutique “indie” label run by Warner Music.
This was the springboard for her most successful album up that that point, 2007′s Year of Meteors. A folk record threaded with an indie spirit, it was widely heralded as a miniature masterpiece. Pitchfork approvingly compared Veirs to Liz Phair and Patti Smith; Rolling Stone praised the project as a “folk-schooled reverie with a dark undercurrent”.
That chapter of her life is now hugely bittersweet. Martine, her ex, produced Year of Meteors and plays drums on it. And yet the ache is fading. She reveals that since her divorce she has dated on and off. Right now, with her LP to think about, she doesn’t feel there is space in her life for a relationship.
She doesn’t mourn that. Part of what Found Light is about is discovering strength in uncertainty. A whole new path is stretched ahead. She doesn’t know what lies around the next bend. And that’s fine.
“Dating is daunting,” she says. “I have done a lot of it. I’m not dating currently. There’s always someone to date. I don’t know the right way to do that right now. I don’t like online dating. I think I’ll just probably stumble into someone at some point. Right now, I’m not even interested in that. I’m exploring myself as an individual — not dating, not looking for that romance. Not even interested.”
A sense of celebration ripples through Found Light. During her decade-plus of marriage, Veirs maintained many female friendships. But it is now, once again single, that she finds herself relying on others. That isn’t a weakness. She embraces it as a strength.
“That’s a challenge for any partnership — not becoming insular. I maintained a core group of women friends throughout my marriage. I leaned on that super hard when I got divorced. And I’m so grateful for my female friends and the fellow moms that I have in my community, and also my brother and my parents, who are currently taking care of my kids while I’m on tour. It becomes very, very clear to you, when you go through a hard break-up like this, how important it is to have community.”
Found Light is out now
