Laura Viers - a festival highlight

There may be a lack of marquee names from the music world in this year’s Arts Festival but anyone with an interest in quality song writing should make it their business to see Laura Veirs solo show in the Róisín Dubh this Friday.Her latest release, Saltbreakers, is one of the albums of the year, a sea-themed collection of songs. “I went through a lot of personal change, a break up and I found a new partner and all this stuff, in the time that I was writing this record,” says Veirs.“So I found that the sea was useful for talking about scenes of destruction and renewal because an ocean can destroy a beach or, as we saw in New Orleans, a city — or it can renew people’s spirits and give them a sense of hope and the infinite. It’s got a really mysterious dark side and a beautiful side that people can enjoy. It has a whole range of options for a poet I think.”It’s this ability to fashion hummable songs from obscure influences that makes Laura Veirs such an intriguing artist. Take Don’t Lose Yourself for example, a shimmering single from Saltbreakers. “I was drawing heavily from a book called Blindness by Jose Saramago for that,” explains Veirs. “He’s a Portuguese writer and his book is about this blindness disease that everyone gets in this fictional planet. It’s just about the anarchy that ensues and human nature.”This may be a solo show, but with an artist of Laura Veirs calibre that is an intriguing prospect. Expect her set in the Róisín Dubh this Friday to be one of the highlights of this year’s Arts Festival.