Ahead of this Friday’s release of her new album, Temple Songs, OR-based artist Laura Veirs has shares her tenderly powerful new single “Arc Still Bends.” The song’s central, apprehensive inquiry (“The arc still bends towards justice, right?”) floats atop an ethereal, gossamer arrangement as Veirs confronts feelings of contemporary despair. “This song wrestles with whether Martin Luther King Jr.’s idea that ‘the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice’ still holds true,” Veirs explains. “It sits in that uneasy space between doubt and hope–grappling with a sense of futility in the present moment, while the chorus reaches for something brighter.
The artist briefly adds: “I’ve been searching for a remedy / guess I’ll keep searching / but three sunbeams I found / warm the cold ground.’ For me, those rays show up in the sound itself, which is the electric guitar lines in the chorus sound like sunlight to me.” “Arc Still Bends” follows the art-experimental standout “Pulse” and the textured, compelling “Flying Into Darkness,” which earned praise and support from Stereogum, WNYC New Sounds, Brooklyn Vegan, The Needle Drop, Under the Radar and other publications.
Since the 2022 release of her last studio album, Found Light, Veirs has kept her days full: building a backyard studio, getting married, blending a family with four teenagers, deepening her visual art practice and expanding her music teaching. “I didn’t know if I would write songs again,” she says. “Turns out that period was a gathering phase. When I made the commitment to recording the album myself, the muse caught me again and it came together very quickly.”
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