Year of Meteors
On her fifth album, the Seattle songwriter-cum-brainy chanteuse once again creates her austere emotional moonscapes, but this time she's molded them into a high-concept travelogue that seems to be about going on a rather somber vacation, or  moving from one place to another. The scenery blurs, but you can pick out her brittle eccentric images, full of specific details that seem to draw you in closer to her cold flame--with Laura Veirs, both God and the Devil are in the details. She has a very specific, but skewed, vision that makes you feel she's just reporting events as they unfold, but she sings and writes with such detachment, you wonder where her autobiography ends and her observational skills kick in. On this record they seem a little closer to home. There's an elegant, sad quality and a jagged yearning here, forcing you to be silent witness to this exquisite, seductive pain.--Jaan Uhelszki