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Musician Tamara Lindeman founded the Canadian folk band Weather Station in 2006, but it was only with the band’s majestic 2021 album Ignorance that she could truly say she found the project’s purpose. One of the best albums of that year, the music explored our modern ecological crisis, collecting personal musings on the climate crisis. “I feel as useless as a tree in a city park / Standing as a symbol of what we’ve torn apart,” Lindeman sang on “Tried to Tell You.” The songs vividly depict and fill the outside world with wonder—wild roses with crinkled petals, misshapen reeds and bulrushes; shearwaters, robins, crows, and thrushes; wind on water; the sun in its glory, setting or creeping through blinds; pink clouds gathering on rocks.
Photo by Brendan George Co.
Weather Station’s musical abilities seemed to blossom with “Ignorance,” and then 2022 brought a companion release that, with it, captured the beautiful fragility of our planet. The follow-up, “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars,” transformed the original’s lofty folk-pop into reverent jazz, unfolding in a vast, tranquil space where the magnificent outdoors isn’t just a refuge from a soulless digital world; it’s a panacea for human self-perception.
On Weather Station’s new album, Humanhood, Lindeman’s view of the world deepens. Her quest to understand “how to be an activist and speak to people emotionally about this issue,” as she noted in Interview magazine, has led to introspection and reflection on dissociation and the importance of maintaining a connection to one’s feelings and the natural order. In exploring this connection, Lindeman pushes the boundaries of her music further than ever before, while continuing to evolve Weather Station’s sound into an evening-orchestra realm that is unique in its own right. “Some people don’t want to see the seams / They want it to be machine-made,” she sings on “Sewing,” her voice softly breaking apart over muted piano and drums. “Straight and simple, no trace of the making / But no two days are ever the same.” Finding and embracing traces of the making—on both an intimate and ecological scale—has become her guiding creative principle. Weather Station will perform at the Bowery Ballroom on April 1 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on April 2.—Sheldon Pierce
Sourse: newyorker.com
