Laura Veirs with special guest Liam Finn

Music Starts:05/13/2008 - 7:30pm

Doors Open:

7:00pm

Laura VeirsLiam FinnTwo of the hottest indie singer-songwriters in one great night! Making his first trip to The Cedar, Liam Finn is touring in support of his breakout album I'll be Lightning, which has created a huge buzz at NYs CMJ music festival and at SXSW. And on a return visit to The Cedar after a mesmerizing show in 2007, Laura Veirs remains tantalized by the mysteries and marvels of the natural world, filling her work with images, both precise and poetic, of the ocean and the stars. But with her third Nonesuch release, Saltbreakers, she digs even deeper this time into the vagaries of human nature, transforming the turbulence of her own life, as well as her concerns about the hair-trigger state of the world at large, into a collection of songs distinguished as much by their emotional urgency as by their often astonishing musical inventiveness.

"Lyrically I drew more from my personal life on this record than with anything I've done in the past," says Veirs. She aims to convey the feeling, if not the specific circumstances, of an intense period in her personal life: the end of a long-term relationship, and the unexpected start of a new one, coupled with a move from Seattle to Portland. She recalls this recent time as "a real emotional pendulum. I was swinging from joy to despair and back again. I was bouncing off the walls." She channeled her restless energy into writing material that mirrors those dramatically swinging moods; it shifts from brooding to euphoric to the hauntingly contemplative.

Since recording, producing and mixing his own solo debut in January, Liam (son of Crowded House's Neil Finn, and nephew of Tim Finn) has spent the year bounding between the UK, US, Australia, and New Zealand performing his chaotic yet intimate one man band renditions of his album "I'll Be Lightning". Liam's unique live performances with back up singer and Autoharp player extraordinaire EJ Barnes, involve him looping guitar parts, bass lines, even psychedelic theremin to create bombastic walls of sound. These loops bubble beautifully under his honest songs and reach points of such intensity that Liam even thrashes away on a drumkit like a man possessed. With glowing reviews of his album "I'll Be Lightning" wherever it strikes, Liam's "I'll Be Lightning" tour will certainly be a wild end to an exciting year. Lightning never strikes twice, so be here the first time!