Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 30/07/07

"OK, so I couldn't afford to bring the band over", says Laura Veirs as she explains just why it is she's standing alone on the stage of this gorgeously intimate and ornate venue. Your humble Yahoo! correspondent has to confess to an initial feeling of mild disappointment; with her fourth album, the ocean-drenched "Saltbreakers", the Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter released what is quite possibly - if you'll excuse the expression - the high-water mark of her career thus far. So the prospect of hearing its songs of doomed love, inspiration and redemption creates a sense of justified excitement.

And yet...and yet…even on her own, Veirs - armed with just an acoustic guitar and a rack of effects - proves to be as engaging a solo performer as she does within the context of a band. Indeed, with her take on Americana stripped back naked and exposed, she gives away more of herself both as a performer and artist than would be expected and the result is a concert that's by turns funny, absorbing and utterly beguiling.

So it is that the delicate "Ocean Night Song" is handled with love and care, its imagery of the ocean as a force for re-birth and hope is evoked by Veirs' suitably fragile delivery. Every word is delivered as if it were her last, every breath used to convey longing, yearning and searching and such is the potency of the song that the respectful audience remains as silent as the breeze throughout.

She also proves herself to be a formidable technician. This isn't to suggest her songs are executed coldly and clinically. Far from it, but the mastery of her tools is remarkable. In the absence of any cohorts, Veirs takes the central riff from the gorgeous "Pink Light", loops it through a series of delay pedals and then plays against herself. As the tale unfolds, she does the same with her voice to become her own backing singer and in the process gives the song a hitherto undiscovered dimension.

Between songs Veirs is revealed as an appealingly witty and warm raconteur. As she recounts her adventures of driving on the left-hand side of the road with only the songs of Neil Young for company, Veirs manages to elicit both sympathy and admiration for the solitary nature of her existence that paradoxically reaches out to the many. "Thank you so much for being my audience here in London", she gushes towards the end of her thoroughly charming performance. Laura, believe us: the pleasure and the privilege were entirely ours.

by Julian Marszalek