Just The Right Side of Quirky

Laura Viers

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Review

Laura Viers

When a performer’s first words are “I don’t feel like playing that….I think I need a drink!” a show can go two ways. Either you are set to be held in the confident throes of artistic abandonment, safe in the knowledge that those on stage will have their wicked musical way with you for the rest of the night; or, as in Laura Veirs’s case, the performance will just be especially nervous and detached.

It’s not that she isn't trying to engage. Returning from an improvisational quilting class (no, really), she makes a request that the audience cut out pieces of their clothing to donate to her trans-national musical super-quilt. These amiable sort of antics probably place her, and the audience, on just the right side of quirky. And yet there is a feeling that she stays on pretty much the right side of everything – to the detriment of the music. The gig is such that not a single person to offer up clothes for stitching. Not even a handkerchief.

Viers is known and loved for her mix of musical Americanisms: country-Delta blues, elegiac folk, lilting guitar melodies and rock inflections. After a three-song false-start, she gets into the swing of things. Veirs is at the start of a UK tour promoting her latest release, Saltbreakers. As well as some tracks from this new album, she plays a selection spanning the whole of her six-album discography. By far the most effective is a re-imagining of one of her older songs, ‘Through December’, swapping guitar for a semi-traditional reworking using a clawhammer banjo technique. At moments like this, where she combines her appreciation of the range of American folk with her technical ability, she is genuinely impressive.

In general, however, she is more comfortable when performing her electro-acoustic numbers, which give the advantage of a fuller sound. But despite the richness of symbolism and metaphor in her lyrics, she performs these potentially emotive songs as if she were going through the motions.

Her next gig could be one of effortless engagement and musical transcendence. I don’t know. Bring a spare shirt, anyway.

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