One funny thing about trauma is how small things — a smell, a sight, a tree that might branch the space between new me and the (better? more naive? is that better?) old me — can have big implications. I’m not sure if that is Laura Veirs’ perspective, but that is how I relate to “Eucalyptus,” a brilliant song from her new album Found Light.
An innocuous morning run leads to an innocuous plant, but no: the tree, the run, the nostalgia, the pain, the anger, and (most importantly) the love are gathered like leaves in the hand of these small things.
That could make a tune’s weight feel heavy, and yet this somehow isn’t. The vocal floats along a sweet, pattered beat; a precarious, pretty melody of green. It, too, may “drop its branches suddenly.”