Laura Veirs - Found Light (LP) - Pink Galaxy Vinyl

Laura Veirs has always felt like a trusted guide through weathered landscapes, and Found Light lands with that calm, searching spirit intact. Released 8 July 2022, it is the first full-length she made without longtime producer Tucker Martine, and you can hear the sense of freedom in the corners of every song. Co-produced with multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, the record shifts the focus to textures that feel hand-cut and immediate, the sort of arrangements that make you lean toward the speakers rather than sit back and admire.

Veirs writes with a diarist’s eye, and the production keeps close to that pulse. Guitars brush rather than blaze, synths and percussion glow at the edges, and her voice sits right there in your living room, steady and clear. You could call it a break-up album, but that misses the point. Found Light is about reorientation, about the small moves that add up to a new life. Nothing here chases catharsis for its own sake. The feelings arrive in clean lines, tidied up like a workbench before the next project.

Winter Windows sets the tone with chugging guitars and quicksilver melody, proof that Veirs can still write a hook that nudges rather than shouts. It carries a sense of motion, like driving the ring road at dusk with the heater on your feet. Then Seaside Haiku distils her craft to something almost weightless. The title is apt. She pares phrases back to their essentials, leaving space for the tide to roll in. It is the kind of short, luminous track you flip the needle back for, just to feel how she places the last syllable.

Ismaily’s touch is all over the record, though never in showy ways. He is known for drawing atmosphere from restrained gestures, and that suits Veirs. Bass murmurs instead of thumps, keys breathe rather than blare. The pair give themselves room to move, which lets the songs pivot from folk bones to gentle art-pop in a blink. You hear it in how a single guitar line can carry a verse, only for a small synth bloom to arrive and change the light in the room. It is the sort of detail that rewards repeat listens, and it is also why Found Light vinyl feels like the ideal format. These are mixes that open up on a good turntable, where the air around each instrument becomes part of the arrangement.

Lyrically, Veirs threads images of bodies and weather, coastlines and domestic spaces. She has always loved the natural world, not as wallpaper but as a set of tools to talk about desire, doubt and fresh starts. There is pleasure here, and play, and something like relief. You sense an artist taking stock and deciding to follow instinct, then letting that decision pull her toward new colours. It is not radical reinvention. It is a smart, grounded reframing that nods to where she has been and quietly points to where she might go next.

If you discovered her through Carbon Glacier or July Flame, this will feel familiar yet newly lit. The songwriting grip remains, the phrasing still lands with a poet’s precision, but the edges are looser. That looseness suits the subject matter and gives the album its glow. It is also why this is a record that invites full plays rather than playlist cherry-picking. Side A glides into Side B with the patience of someone who knows the shape of a day. On that note, if you are hunting for Laura Veirs vinyl, Found Light belongs on the shelf beside My Echo for a neat portrait of two chapters in dialogue.

For those of us in Australia, it has quietly become a shop-floor favourite. I have overheard more than one staffer in a Melbourne record store steer a curious browser toward it with a knowing grin. If you prefer to buy Laura Veirs records online, the pressing has been easy to find, and the soundstage is generous without being glossy. It is a lovely way to hear the interplay between her guitar and Ismaily’s understated contributions. And if you are building a small run of Laura Veirs albums on vinyl, this one anchors the collection with a sense of calm momentum.

Found Light does not beg for attention. It earns it with care, curiosity and a light touch that lingers. Put it on during a slow morning, or late at night when the house has settled, and it shows you what it is made of. That quiet confidence is its charm, and it is also what keeps you coming back. In a year of loud statements, Laura Veirs chose clarity and space. The result feels like a hand on the shoulder and a door opening at once, which is exactly the kind of comfort many of us go to vinyl records for, in Australia or anywhere.