Next month, the Portland singer-songwriter Laura Veirs will come out with her new LP Found Light, which she co-produced with Shahzad Ismaily. The new album is mostly about life after divorce. We’ve already posted the early singles “Winter Windows” and “Seaside Haiku,” and now Veirs has shared a third song.
Veirs’ new song “Eucalyptus” is a musical departure for her. Veirs has made a lot of music, and most of it is relatively sedate, but this song is built on a pounding drum-machine beat. Veirs’ lyrics on the track are emotional, but she sings them with a sort of distance; I get a bit of a Suzanne Vega vibe from it. Here’s how Veirs describes the song:
This is a song about the community love I felt when I went through my divorce. It’s also about new love and about rediscovering myself as a solo person post-divorce. I reminisce here about “finding the old girl I was” back when I visited my brother in California when he was in college where they have lovely eucalyptus trees. Some eucalyptus trees will drop their branches suddenly on you, though, so those are the varieties you don’t want to plant in your backyard.
This was the trickiest song to record on the new album. It started out with a Bossa nova rhythm, but I found that cheesy. My co-producer Shahzad Ismaily and I tried many different drum and bass ideas on this track before we landed here. I recorded the rain sounds spontaneously with my phone while sitting outside Shahzad’s studio in Brooklyn when we recorded the record last September. I love the unexpected places this song goes.
Listen to “Eucalyptus” below.
Found Light is out 7/8 via Raven Marching Band Records.
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