Making records can be a grizzly business

FOR many bands, the sorts of dangers which can imperil a new album release are quite mundane. A rival band might put out their opus on the same day, the record company could decide they are no longer a priority act, or it could be something as simple and stupid as the drummer (seldom the brightest of buttons) inadvertently shaving his eyebrow just before the promotional photo shoot.

American singer-songwriter Laura Veirs faced a more visceral kind of danger. Had she not read up on what to do when confronted by a grizzly bear, she might not be around to promote her new album, Year of Meteors. A resident of Seattle and keen wilderness lover, Veirs recently decided to take a break hiking in Alaska before coming to Europe to tour her new work. In the middle of nowhere, she stumbled across a grizzly with two cubs. "Coming across a mom bear with cubs is the most dangerous situation to be in," says the 31-year-old.

"You are supposed to stand your ground if they come after you. You don't run because they can chase you down in a couple of seconds and they will eat you."

Fortunately the bear didn't seem too bothered by Veirs' presence and the singer didn't have to play who-blinks-first with 400lbs of muscle, teeth and claws. Had there been a bear-based tragedy it would have been grimly ironic, given that Veirs' work is so richly imbued with images taken from the natural world.

Volcanoes, stars, ice, waves, weather and the sea all pop up regularly in her lyrics, so it isn't a huge shock that she originally studied to be a geologist. A university field trip to the desert of north-west China cemented a burgeoning conviction that her future life lay in songwriting rather than rock breaking, and after a frustrating few years on the Seattle coffee house scene, Veirs is finally making headway.

Meteors is her fifth album, but it was her fourth - Carbon Glacier - that really began to carve a career for her and get her noticed. Bella Union, the record label of former Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde and Robin Guthrie, picked up the record in the UK, and subsequently interest in Veirs' work increased in her native United States.

Though Veirs started out playing in punk bands, her current material is much more intricate. She has a trippy, poetic take on Americana that has been called everything from neo-folk to post-country. She is not averse to the occasional ballad, but nor does she fight shy of a little electronic noodling.

"I see myself as taking influences from country and folk players of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, but also the punk rockers of the late Eighties and early Nineties," she says. "The riot girl movement is in there as well."

Veirs toured extensively with Carbon Glacier and as a result the new album is packed with imagery of things on the move, not least the meteors of the album title.

"That stuff is in there but you would never really know that it is because it's all about volcanoes and mermaids rather than truck stops," she concedes.

It is also more of a team record than the haunting Carbon Glacier. Veirs is currently touring with three-piece band the Tortured Souls, and often used them when recording her earlier albums. But they have played a much larger part in Meteors than on previous work.

"I wrote it with more electric guitar and noise and drums in mind," explains Veirs. "It is more of a band record than the last one - more up tempo and more layered, although there are still some fairly sparse acoustic type songs in there. It's just the pendulum swinging back. My interest always swings between quiet, introspective, older influenced music and louder, heavier stuff."

However she chooses to deliver her lyrics, they are almost always dressed in elemental imagery. No matter where you are in Britain, you are never further than 75 miles from the sea.

Similarly, no matter where you are in a Laura Veirs' songs, you are never more than two syllables away from a nature-based metaphor, and often an ocean-themed one at that. "When I first started writing, these ideas just came out of my mind as a way of expressing myself. It just seemed very natural," she says.

"It sounds silly to say that writing about nature is natural, but it was. Day-to-day life can grind away a sense of proportion and a sense of what is really important. If you head out to a place where there are no other signs of human life, then you can get a little more perspective on what is important and what you are really trying to do with your life."

Laura Veirs and the Tortured Souls play the ABC, Glasgow (0870 903 3444), Thursday, 7.30pm