Laura Veirs: July Flame

Laura Veirs makes thoughtful, folk-tinged, quietly rapturous albums that inspire effervescent reviews, but tend to sit in a neglected corner of the CD cabinet, rarely touched. July Flame is her seventh, and parts of it are so extravagantly beautiful that it will send you scurrying back to its predecessors, particularly 2004's Carbon Glacier. Recorded at home with new partner and long-time producer Tucker Martine, it has such an unassuming, homespun quality that you're constantly surprised by how expansive and richly textured its songs are. There are intricate string arrangements, crashing timpani embellishing Silo Song, burnished backing vocals from My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James. Wide-Eyed, Legless darts about like a hummingbird, Veirs's vocal and guitar performing a courtly dance with Eyvind Kang's sinuous viola. The tapestry of sounds is so mesmerising, it more than compensates for the odd gaucheness in the lyrics.