Laura Veirs - 'July Flame' (Bella Union) Released 11/01/10

'July Flame' is Laura Veirs seventh outing, and a return to the label with the Midas touch, Bella Union. Having shacked up in Portland, Oregon with long-time producer Tucker Martine and with an infant due, 'July Flame' plays up the elements of 2005's 'Year Of The Meteors' (air) and 2007's 'Saltbreakers' (water), with the fiery elementals of 'July Flame' checked by intricate guitar finger-pickings and poesy pitched in the key of glee. An unabashed eloquence assumes the lingua franca of 'July Flame' without sounding wordy or obtuse - melancholic glooms are cast aside and Veirs songs saunter, creating a sense of summery romance where things are possible, permanence is tangible, and love comes in requited shades.

Speaking of the title, Veirs explains - “July Flame” is: A destructive force, lamplight on a cold night, Oregon peach variety, intense summer love, fireworks, war, sunlight trapped in wood, renewal, spooky will-o-the-wisps, desire, pain, ephemera". What makes 'July Flame' such a stand-out is how it stands in a lineage that would include Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Fleet Foxes and Vashti Bunyan, as well as Carol Kaye (who's attributed a homage), an album so restrained yet bristling with enthusiasm, beauty and poetry.

The briny lyricism of yore is supplanted by summer's long yawn with the sun, fire, magma and flames stoking love and desire. 'I Can See Your Tracks' has a Vashti-Bunyan-like purity of tone and mellifluous guitar, while the title track steels the thunder with minimal chords, a bassy thrum and throb gathering charge for the mantric chorus - "...can I call you mine...", the peachy track sating the "...unslakeable thirsting in the back yard...".

'Sun Is King' continues the solar activity with an alt-country tune backed by mellow steel pedal banishing talk of rain and misery, and 'Silo Song' gets all imagistic with smoky tones and Venus de Milo, while the piano-led Carole King-like jauntiness of 'Summer Is The Champion' carries the motifs the best with brass fanfares and a celebratory grace - "...honey wax, melt it down, make your heart, molten somehow, turn the fields of stone to magma...".

Elsewhere, 'When You Give Your Heart' is a love-song dense with imagery - "...since you turned your light, upon my darkened dale, the pollinators flex their wings...spin their emeraldine, webs across the swales and prairies...", and the bucolic 'Where Are You Driving' carries Celtic-strains alongside a Suzanne Vega/Joanna Newsom lyricism. Elsewhere, 'Life Is Good Blues' sings of wrenching life's experience to the last drop, whilst life drains poetically and contrastingly from the bullet holes in a soldiers side on 'Sleeper In The Valley' as he lays amongst the blue watercress and crow's swoon.

The unassuming delight 'Little Deschutes' contrasts a broody piano with ethereal lyrics of lovelorn surrender and a desire for something lasting - "...I want nothing more, than to float with you// Paddling through the hail storm, clothes ravaged, the leaves all torn, a part of me was born...", and the album closer has Jim James (My Morning Jacket) duet on 'Make Something Good' - "...I wanted to make something pure, and emerald field from steer manure, a wild-eyed child in a moonlit room...", the sentiment borne, "it's gonna take a long long time, but we're gonna make something so fine". 'July Flame' may be the first must-have album of 2010, but it is Laura Veirs triumphant, quicksilver release.