January 15, 2010

Album review: Laura Veirs - July Flame (Bella Union)

Proof that Americana needn't be the pursuit of the hirsute

8 / 10 Testimony to the fact that nu-Americana can be successfully beard-free, ‘July Flame’, Veirs’ seventh album, is impressively unselfconscious in its girlishness. Here is a winsome, lady-driven response to the wood-chopping likes of Midlake, Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket that remains refreshingly sweet. From opener ‘I Can See Your Tracks’, the acoustic finger-picking which trickles throughout the record flutters like soft Appalachian rainfall, setting a delicate, serene tone that Veirs rarely strays from. As the simple strings on ‘Where Are You Driving?’ shimmer with moonshine dregs and ‘Wide-Eyed, Legless’ shows off its otherworldliness, ‘July Flame’’s loveliness is hard to put out.

Leonie Cooper

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Click here to by Laura Veirs' 'July Flame' from the Rough Trade shop.