Sweet Kooky Laura

Laura Veirs, Manchester Academy, 5/4/07.

After a good day and an enjoyable evening catching up with the Shoes. I decided to spend most of the day taking a trip out to Salford to see the Lowry exhibition.


It's about a 15 min metrolink ride to Salford Keys. A complex of theaters, exhibitions and shops ect. The Lowry center itself houses an exhibition of work by Lowry, obviously.

After some retail therapy, yeah I bought a couple of albums, so what? I got the metro and got there about 1ish. It was only about a 5/10 min walk to the exhibition center. I was surprised to see it was free to get in, but donations accepted.
As you walk in the first painting your hit with is the famous "Going to the match" which was larger than I had anticipated. It is one of those paintings that you can stare at all day and still pick up new details. Anyway it was a great look round Lowrys work and very enjoyable, I'm glad I finally made the the time to do it.



I got to the Academy at more or less doors (7:30) and bumped into Colin, the guy I met at K's show last month. We had a chat and went into the gig together. Took up residence right in front of Laura's mike, must admit I was really looking forward to seeing her plugged in as I'd only seen her play solo acoustic before. By this time Nick who I know had turned up and the three of us chatted for a while till lights went down. The support was from Your Heartbrakes who are led by Serene Peterson the girl who runs Laura's web site. They were ok, I ended up buying their cd anyway.

Laura came on sporting a new short haircut and dress embroidered with stars and a guitar with an LV on it, kooky!

She opened the set with the single Pink light. The first four song were off the new album she then played Parisian dream off Meteors. In a similar vein to Kristin she then played four acoustic songs in the middle of the set.

It was great to see Laura with a full band. Tucker Martine was playing drums he's her producer and also a member of the Decemberists, who I saw last month. The guy playing keys is also an interesting chap, Karl Blau. He runs a small independent label in Seattle which you can only get stuff online but have to subscribe. You pay a yearly fee and he sends out stuff that he thinks is worthy of listening too.

Including the encore Laura played all 12 songs off the new album, unusual that. I suppose she has a confidence in the material to do so.

She played a few of my faves off Meteors, Secret Someones, Rialto and Parisian Dream. There was no Galaxies though which was a shame.
There was one superb moment during Phantom Mountain, this is one of the more rockier songs on Saltbreakers. During the song in the instrumental bridge Laura turned side on to Tucker and they exchanged a look and a smile. It was one of those looks were you could just tell they were saying to each other "this is good". It was very good! At the end I grabbed Laura's set list.

After the gig Colin and I went to the merch table. Nick had to run to get his train back to Macclesfield. I had a chat with Serene and bought her album. Laura then came out I had chat with her as I needed to ask about her mailing list. She has changed servers and I can't seem to bring up the new page. Laura immediately handed my question to Serene who told me the best thing to do would be to re-register.
I got Laura to sign my ticket said my my goodbye to Colin and headed off, I again ripped the gig poster off the door on my way out. Jeez I'm a kleptomaniac.