July Flame

Stuck in the midst of winter, it's sometimes hard for us to see as far as its end. It must feel like a trudging schlep for record label bosses, too. December and January are famously quiet months for major music releases, but practically every year there's a winter album that sticks in the memory as much as the wince-inducing torment of waking up on icy mornings for months on end and essentially wanting to die, or at least move. Bella Union had a fair amount of success with Andrew Bird's Noble Beast this time last year. For 2010, Laura Veirs' seventh album, July Flame, seems to have been strategically released to warm the cockles of our collectively frozen heart.

Laura Veirs lingers perhaps unfairly in the shadow of flashier, quirkier, louder young folkie starlets. On her seventh album, July Flame, Veirs mines the same territory as those darlings She & Him (who released a fantastic album in 2008) and that quirkier, head-scratchier pair, Scarlet Johansson and Pete Yorn (who released a passable album in 2009).