Laura Veirs-Year Of Meteors

“Year Of Meteors,” Suzanne Vega’s first album since “Days Of Open Hand” is not as good as Beth Orton’s “Carbon Glaciers” and…ok, I’ll stop there. Laura Veirs is the kind of artist that most people have never heard of, but when they do, they’ll automatically think “Haven’t I heard this before?” The answer is yes, but can you really fault an artist for sounding like Suzanne Vega or taking a production tip from Beth Orton? The world is certainly big enough to have more than one folky singer-songwriter or, at least, a producer who melts atmospheric electronica over tried-and-true acoustic guitar strumming.
Where Laura’s last effort, “Carbon Glaciers,” got noticed for being a high quality folk album, “Year Of Meteors” utilizes Veirs’ backing band and sounds almost entirely contrived and lacking chemistry. Ironically, it works on some levels, particularly when the subject matter gets cold and, ahem, spacey. “Galaxies” stands out as one of those examples and is one of those songs that perks your ears as it plays overhead when you’re ordering a white chocolate soy mocha with no whip cream. Before you think I’m being mean, understand that I’ve got a thing for that very overpriced drink and, as a result, absolutely love the song “Galaxies.” It’s just as fucking catchy as, say, “Luka” and a helluva lot less pretentious too.

Speaking of, Veirs gets a little too caught up in her wordsmiths, often ending up in the “what the fuck?” category (“Crawl inside like a honeybee”) but every now and then hitting something clever (“with white spider stars coming down”). When it works, you can overlook her obvious influences and when it doesn’t, you start to wonder what happened to those influences because they did it better the first time.
Since she studied geology, there’s more than a few references to that field (“by your zirconium smile”) and there’s something a little intriguing about that geekiness. Combined with Veirs’ scholastic phrasing and her lack of vocal details, it’s obvious that she has some passion behind her songs even though folksinger was not her first career path choice. But “Year Of Meteors” is just good enough for us to be thankful that she put down the rocks and picked up the hollowbody.