Laura Veirs: Down to earth ... and out to sea

Laura Veirs
Saltbreakers
Nonesuch

Laura Veirs creates music that takes you places.

Sometimes it's the cosmos, sometimes it's way out to sea, but it's always a place of movement and beauty.

With "Saltbreakers," her third release, Veirs spends a little more time than on previous albums here on earth, in the realm of real feelings based on real life. But her trademark mysticism is very much intact, phrased surprisingly matter-of-factly with Veirs' unadorned vocals, and backed by … sound. The music is probably tied most strongly to electronica – but it's the soothing kind, not the dance club variety. Rounding out the beats and keyboards is a smattering of more traditional instruments, like viola, stand-up bass, bells and euphonium.

If you want a journey through the deeply metaphorical, there are lyrics such as these, from "Ocean Night Song," sung over a delicate melody that evokes gentle nighttime ocean waves, and probably not on accident:

The petals of night are unfolding
A mermaid's map floats by on the rolling green.
A Japanese fishing float
Carried my soul out to the whales
And out to the deep.

But somehow, by the time she gets to the line: "Swimming with my fallen blossoms/I drink from the source above," you totally get what she's talking about.

It's like that with Laura Veirs. Amid all the imagery – more often than not about the sea – are vivid feelings and startingly simple truths.

A new ingredient in the mix on "Saltbreakers" is some added vocal depth from bandmates, often in the form of call-and-response segments. Veirs' voice can evoke all kinds of effects – from the trippy to the tragic, the fun to the forlorn – all by itself, but the addition of other voices is a nice little something new.

So yeah, Veirs sings about feelings. And moods. And the ocean. But this isn't a CD I'd call mellow. Several tracks are uptempo and carry an air of playfulness, and even the slower ones are more trance-y than snooze-y.

Like the everlasting supply of saltbreakers – a term for waves – a Laura Veirs song contains endless nuances. The more you listen, the more you'll find a lyric jumping out at you, a melody sticking in your head, a message being understood amid the metaphor.