{"id":741623,"date":"2026-08-18T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/741623\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T07:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:22:10","slug":"laura-veirs-temple-songs-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/741623\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Veirs: Temple Songs Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe arc still bends towards justice, right?\u201d Laura Veirs<\/a> asks at the start of Temple Songs, her first collection of original material since 2022\u2019s Found Light. Veirs follows her opening gambit by confessing she\u2019s \u201cnot so sure in the middle of the night,\u201d wondering why she\u2019s \u201cstill holding this fucking sign.\u201d The nod to protests and societal upheaval provides context for the sublime tranquility of Temple Songs: It\u2019s an album that plays like a respite from chaos.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, Veirs made Temple Songs without any outside assistance: She wrote, recorded, produced, and played every note on the record, barring some saxophone credited to \u201cspecial guest \u2018Filthy\u2019 Lucre.\u201d The album takes its name from the Temple of Bloom, the studio she constructed in a backyard shed in the home she shares with her new husband, ethnomusicologist Morgan Luker, and their blended family. The pair married in early 2025, a few months before Veirs cut Temple Songs at their property, grabbing time for herself in a cramped room bearing a couple of mics, instruments, and a laptop.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Solo doesn\u2019t necessarily mean minimal. Veirs begins many songs strumming and picking a guitar but never leaves her tracks unadorned. She shades them with double-tracked harmonies and overdubbed guitar, the occasional keyboard and sax, all of which has the effect of opening up the music, letting it not feel cloistered and secluded. The sax emphasizes the understated bossa nova rhythm of \u201cPulse\u201d and adds a layer of warmth to \u201cOut from Undercover,\u201d whose lilting melody already provided a sense of comfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A gentle undercurrent of gloom occasionally bubbles to the surface of these songs. Notably, it\u2019s there on the album\u2019s bookends, \u201cArc Still Bends\u201d and \u201cSunlight and Doom,\u201d providing a transition from the outside world into the oasis of the album and back again. But Veirs spends Temple Songs consciously choosing hope. The sweet sigh of \u201cGolden Seams\u201d concludes with her singing about \u201cfools hungering for love\u201d who \u201cfound it right here.\u201d That feeling of contentment is deepened by \u201cFeeling Returns,\u201d a lovely tune as elegant as a Burt Bacharach number.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The way \u201cFeeling Returns\u201d celebrates the reawakening of emotion also hints at how Temple Songs represents something of a revival for Veirs. In the years following the dissolution of her marriage to her longtime producer Tucker Martine, she experienced a period of writer\u2019s block so severe, she wondered if she\u2019d ever again compose music. There are suggestions of that creative discomfort scattered through the album, particularly on the existential reflection of \u201cFlying into the Darkness,\u201d but the remarkable thing about the album is how relaxed it seems. Even the music is suffused with sadness or doubt, Veirs isn’t wallowing in melancholy; her creativity flows easily. The tracks unfold simply, a move that lets lilting melodies and unguarded reflections settle into the subconscious. Alone in her private sanctuary, she\u2019s created songs that feel like a collection of reassuring secular hymns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/a><\/p>\n

Laura Veirs: Temple Songs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe arc still bends towards justice, right?\u201d Laura Veirs asks at the start of Temple Songs, her first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-741623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}