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Laura Veirs performs "Secret Someones"

Seattle-based singer/singer songwriter Laura Veirs has spent most of the last couple years not recording and touring behind her highly celebrated string of albums, but instead doing interviews and topping best-of-the-year lists. UK publications like Mojo and Uncut are just a pair of the significant publications to heap praise on Viers.

Signed in 2003 by Nonesuch, a label notoriously selective about the slim few pop and rock acts it adds to its imprint, Veirs set out on her first tour in 2004, starting—perhaps wisely—in Europe, where she sold out venues and amassed critical kudos. That tour was undertaken in support of her album Carbon Glacier (Nonesuch). Viers followed it up in August 2005 with her fourth album, the elemental Year of the Meteors (Nonesuch), which manages to blend an air of traditional folk with a balance of jazz and welcome pop touches.

Year of the Meteors—which Viers says was based in large part on her experiences on the road during the promotion of Glaciers—was a critically acclaimed affair and won her a host of year-end accolades. Along with backup band Tortured Souls, Viers succeeds on that album in creating a feeling not unlike Van Morrison’s epic Astral Weeks, with an air of autumnal magic that perfectly places Viers’ poetic observations and storytelling in a bed of atmospheric music for it to majestically fold into. Simultaneously dreamy and down home, Viers’ sound is a kind of deadpan folk, with a twang that enhances the beauty of the vocals, especially when in subtle contrast to the lyrics and instrumentals.

Her appearance at the Mohawk Place this Sunday features the Tortured Souls, with a special solo performance by Souls’ member Karl Blau, whose debut album Beneath the Waves was just released in January of this year. Blau has played with numerous other groups in the Washington State area, including Mirah, Wolf Colonel, the Microphones and Little Wings, to name a few.

Sunday, May 21, 8pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk Street (855-3931). With Morgan Maria. $10.