Many of the recognizable features of modern life are decidedly missing from Laura Veirs’s Phone Orphans. Throughout the album’s 14 songs, the singer-songwriter is surrounded by tall trees and clear blue skies, providing her with space and serenity. This quaint setting, a distillation of her real-life home of Portland, Oregon, may on its surface suggest an affinity for cottagecore romanticism. But in stripping back her lyrics to plainspoken refrains throughout the album, Veirs highlights the simple and unavoidable truth that human life, no matter how seemingly advanced and complex, is defined by mortality.
The album’s acoustic arrangements, which consist mostly of guitar and conversational vocals, are delicate and bright, but its sparse instrumentation makes Veirs’s preoccupation with death all the more unavoidable. The minor-key incantation “Creatures of a Day,” for one, begins with the refrain, “Creatures of a day/Born to fade,” with the track offering no plush folk production or flowery imagery to cushion its opening statement. But as on 2020’s My Echo, in which Veirs recounted the dissolution of her marriage and its emotional toll, she offers both hope and determination: “I know the challenge is/Going on empty/You still gotta give.”
“Swan Dive,” in which Veirs’s long, breathy notes are absorbed into a rippling guitar melody, is ostensibly about swimming, but lyrics that describe flying into a flash of light take on a heavenly connotation in the context of the rest of the album. Likewise, on “If You Could Hold Someone,” we’re left to wonder whether she yearns for the subject of the song simply because she loves them or because they’ve died, or both, deepening the tender ballad with a sense of melancholy.
Which isn’t to say that Phone Orphans is a downer. If anything, it has the calming effect of a parent lovingly stroking a child’s hair. The closing track, “Beautiful Dreams,” conflates death with rest, foregoing euphemism in favor of a soothing equanimity: “While the waking world burns/You find relief in sleep/Rest your head now/In your beautiful dreams.” Elsewhere, on a cover of Rosalie Sorrels’s “Up Is a Nice Place to Be,” Veirs’s a cappella vocal simulates the experience of flying away and finding a meditative silence in the sky.
As suggested by its title, Phone Orphans is a collection of first-take demos recorded on Veirs’s phone, laden with subtle sonic artifacts like background fuzz and lip smacks. Nevertheless, these songs embody fully articulated ideas on love, family, and mortality, striking a balance between rawness and refinement. When Veirs slips loosely into vocal fry and intermittently quavers on “Rocks of Time,” she sounds as if she’s whispering directly into your ear. With Phone Orphans, Veirs exposes her creative process and, in doing so, maps out the rich topography of her psyche.
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