Laura Veirs has shared new single “Eucalyptus,” the third off her forthcoming new album Found Light, available July 8th via her own Raven Marching Band Records. “This is a song about the community love I felt when I went through my divorce,” explains Veirs. “It’s also about new love and 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,” she continues. “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.”

Portland, OR-based Veirs embarks on a headlining summer tour across the U.K. and North America tomorrow, beginning in Norwich, U.K. and wrapping up at Brooklyn, NY’s Public Records on July 28th, with Andy Jenkins as support in the U.S.

While this is technically Veirs’s 12th studio LP, Found Light also, in many ways, feels like her debut. It’s the first record she co-produced (alongside Ismaily) out of her entire catalog, following her 2019 split from her longtime husband and producer, and the release finds Veirs embracing a self-sovereignty and artistic independence she’d never known previously. Her divorce left her questioning her identity as an artist: had that part of her, which seemed intractably intertwined with her partner for so long, been swallowed in the split? Historically, Veirs handled her song’s most fundamental elements — the writing and the singing — but she always left arrangement and production decisions to her partner. Though she co-owned a studio with him, she never led the charge in it, and she had never played guitar while singing on tape at the same time. Despite having put out a dozen albums, she wondered if she actually had the know-how to make one without him.

Following a string of brief sessions (some with Death Cab for Cutie multi-instrumentalist Dave Depper, and some alone in her own home), she booked time at Portland’s Jackpot Studios, then called her old friend Ismaily and asked him to join. Ismaily offered guidance and insight, but gave her space to make her own choices and invite her own guests, like Sam Amidon and Karl Blau. She finally sang while she played guitar, realizing perhaps for the first time she was actually great at something she’d done most of her life.

Veirs spent months doubting herself but soon started writing, exercising, painting, playing, and seeing other people, both romantically and artistically. She was discovering new sides of herself, or even rediscovering ones she’d lost — in both cases, finding new light. Found Light is a provocative document of it all, from her paintings that adorn it to her tales of lovers and woes and realizations therein. Despite the sadness and suffering that prompted these 14 graceful wonders, they are ultimately a testament to the inspiration of independence, to shaping new possibilities for yourself even after great loss.

Laura Veirs 2022 Live Dates:

6/09 – Norwich, UK @ Norwich Arts Centre
6/10 – Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
6/11 – Cambridge, UK @ Storey’s Field Centre
6/12 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
6/14 – Gosforth, UK @ Civic Theatre
6/15 – Edinburgh, UK @ Artiscience Library
6/16 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
6/18 – Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall
6/19 – Manchester, UK @ Deaf Institute
6/21 – Cardiff, UK @ Pentyrch
6/22 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
6/23 – Exeter, UK @ Exeter Phoenix
6/25 – Glastonbury, UK – Glastonbury Festival
6/27 – Southsea, UK @ Wedgewood Rooms
6/28 – Guildford, UK @ Boileroom
6/29 – Brighton, UK @ Komedia
6/30 – London, UK @ Union Chapel
7/16 – Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Music / Szold Hall
7/17 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
7/18 – Toronto, ON @ The Drake
7/20 – Portland, ME @ One Longfellow Square
7/21 – Newport, RI @ Newport Vineyards
7/22 – Boston, MA @ Haymarket
7/23 – Exeter, NH @ The Word Barn
7/24 – Northampton, MA @ Parlor Room
7/26 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
7/27 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage (seated)
7/28 – New York, NY @ Public Records

Pre-prder Found Light by Laura Veirs HERE