Laura Veirs Recorded 'Temple Songs' in a Backyard Shed With Two Mics and Made Her Warmest Album in Years
Laura Veirs made her fourteenth album alone in a shed behind her house in Portland, Oregon, over roughly three months, using two microphones and a laptop. It’s the first record she’s recorded entirely herself, and she’s credited on it as producer, engineer, arranger and composer — plus the artwork and calligraphy. That’s not a novelty detail. It’s the reason Temple Songs sounds the way it does.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: With only two mics, there’s no isolation and no re-amping, so the low end comes from placement rather than layering — guitar body resonance and room, not a bass track propping things up. Phil Weinrobe’s mix leans into that, and Josh Bonati’s master resists the temptation to fatten what was deliberately recorded thin.
The Spatial Dynamics: Everything lives close. You hear the shed. What’s striking is how much variety Veirs wrings out of a fixed setup: the electric guitar excursions sit in the same physical space as the fingerpicked passages, so when the record gets loud it gets loud in the room rather than in some larger imagined one. The Arts Desk, awarding four stars, described her as offsetting “glacial shimmer with a dive into electric-guitar freakiness.”
Standout Performance
The saxophonist credited only as “Filthy” Lucre, appearing on two tracks and functioning as the record’s one outside voice — a splash of another color in an album otherwise made entirely by one person in one small building.
Why It’s Certified
“Arc Still Bends” opens in under two and a half minutes. “Pulse” and “Flying Into Darkness” are the electric heart of it. “Colors Sing” is over in ninety-four seconds and doesn’t need a second more. “Sunlight and Doom” closes the sequence with the record’s best title and its steadiest hand. AllMusic called it “quietly confident and infused with the strong poetic sense that marks all of Veirs’ best work.” Certified great.