The Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman)

Also I'm listening to Loyalty now and feeling like a dick for not doing so years ago.

First listen and her voice in places has got a deep velvety but slightly husky quality that makes me think of Tanita Tikaram

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdEI775vfnI

heard this live version on a comp a year or two ago, hadn't realized there was a video. sometimes her vocal phrasing reminds me of paul simon in a good way.

"thirty" is such an amazing song

Tamara feels to me like the refinement and distillation of a handful of threads of Canadian music-- Siberry, The Hip, Gordon Lightfoot in particular. Most importantly, though, is the intangible "wrecking crew" of musicians/producers/engineers in Toronto and Montreal (in particular)-- more of a "wrecking cloud", I guess-- a larger collective of extremely capable individuals, many of whom are prominently featured in The Weather Station's recordings. You'll find a lot of the same musicians on this record are also featured, say, on Lido Pimienta's recent Tiny Desk, or my own production work; we're really having a moment up here imo!

It's nice to see Will Kidman (of Constantines, Woolly Leaves) on guitar in that video of "Thirty"; he is playing drums in the video for "Robber", too

finally checked out "robbers" def hear the ricki lee jones pirates era in it

re that cloud, two drummers on <I>Ignorance</i> (neither is kidman) - one of them is Phil Melanson, who is all over (for example) the new Sam Gendel record

and then there are contributions from toronto's jazz/ratdrifting crew, like Ryan Driver and Christine Bougie

Oh no, I didn't state that Kidman was on the track itself (I don't know, one way or another), just in the video-- as is Johnny Spence! as an actor. The other drummer is Kieran Adams, and, well, where to start? https://www.discogs.com/artist/1345463-Kieran-Adams

yeah i didn't mean to correct you, o! obviously you know all this stuff. :) just bringing it to other people's interest/attention

New song. Album Ignorance to be released in February.

https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance

"tried to tell you" is also excellent, really looking forward to this album

Ta, Willem. Another top knotch single, likewise can't wait for this to drop!

Good groove, looking forward to the album!

Thanks Willem, great. All she touches becomes gold...

was hoping Subdivisions would be a cover of the Rush song but looks like no

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_BRoP1yqjo

this album is going to be fantastic

all three songs so far have really hit it out of the park

finally got the s/t on vinyl after listening to it so much on streaming, still a great record sounds beautiful on vinyl

Climate Change Is Worsening. So the Weather Station Is Singing About It.

Some musicians are compelled to write a song after a lovers’ quarrel, an encounter with a great work of art or a particularly resonant overheard exchange. Tamara Lindeman, the 36-year-old Canadian singer and songwriter who records under the name the Weather Station, was recently driven to write one immediately after reading an article about the oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil.

Goin' Mobil

album is quite good, maybe not as overwhelmingly great as the singles were but i'm still very impressed

the orchestration + motorik rhythms reminds me a lot of some tracks owen pallett's heartland which is always delightful to be reminded of (i realise they did some of the string arrangements here too)

There's an extended family of musicians that have been cross-pollinating everything up here, I call it "The Wrecking Cloud". Extends from Toronto to Montreal, touches every album from Lido to Andy Shauf to Martha and on and on

Oh ya I said this already a few months ago lol

Ha, O! The Wrecking Cloud is hilariously apt.

I'd especially recommend to anyone into Tamara who hasn't heard Bernice yet that they check that project out, too: https://bernice.bandcamp.com/album/eau-de-bonjourno

Whereas Tamara's prob closer in sound/spirit to Jennifer Castle, and Robin Dann/Bernice works more with an electronic R&B palate closer to DIANA in terms of fellow Torontonians, these are all interrelated pockets of music activity that I've been especially excited by over the last decade+ via being both friends and fans of these people via venue-hangouts like the Tranzac and the now-defunct Holy Oak.

Two other more jazz-adjacent local labels with ties to Tamara would be the late CD label Rat-drifting (via Ryan Driver, an incredible keyboard player and warbly balladeer) and the still-running CD label All Set! Editions (via Mike Smith, a brilliant bassist and between-genres composer who is also often hired to arrange strings for folks like Tamara and Jennifer).

There's also Matt "Prince Nifty" Smith, who has been in a long-standing trio with 0P above and now co-produces Lido P.: https://princenifty.bandcamp.com/album/were-not-in-kansas-anymore
and Brodie West, who plays sax on "Robber" and leads a great tropical/Ethio jazz band called Eucalyptus (which Mike S. and R. Driver are in, incidentally): https://brodiewest.bandcamp.com/album/kick-it-till-you-flip-it

Forgive the cloudiness of my rambling scene report

The Wrecking Cloud aesthetic got applied to tMG's album from 2019, too-- Thom Gill, Johnny Spence and Bram Gielen were all brought in to hit some home runs. Bram was hired back for "Getting Into Knives". All these people are so heavy

Totally--I'd also shine a light on Felicity Williams as a semi-secret-weapon vocal ninja, maybe most heard outside T.O. circles for her work in the Bahamas band (along with Christine Bougie, another wizard session player who plays aux guitar w/ Afie J and is likewise part of this forthcoming Weather Station album that I'll clunkily tie it all back to)

shoutout joseph shabason

phil melanson (Wreicking Cloud member) also appears on the new Sam Gendel (west coast US saxophone)

For sure--Philadelphia and Satin Doll were both 2020 standout releases IMO

P4K IG Live-from-home concert tonight at 6pm:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK1gPMCFf3s/

best new music on pitchfork!

i was wondering, seemed like they'd been investing in weather station a bit in the run-up

lmao this is such ILM catnip

it's nice but feels a bit too polite/anaesthetized or something for my liking

it falls off for me a little bit in the second half which is generally slower and less propulsive

i have had the chorus of "tried to tell you" in my head for months now though, i love that little keyboard lick

yeah the more upbeat songs were the standouts for me

is the last song a rush cover y/n

"heart" is what I want out of this sort of thing

Album sounds really warm and full, but not heavy or overly fussy in the least. Really nice arrangements.

This is an album whose bone-deep grief sits inside music that’s very easy to tap a toe to.

Fantastic review by Kitty Empire: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/06/the-weather-station-ignorance-review-tamara-lindeman-hope-heartbroken-masterpiece

I don't even know if I've reached bone-deep levels of listening to this - I'm not sure if I like this a lot or love it - but I do know it's definitely there for me to listen to if I so choose and open myself up to it. (and for Lindeman, this is well deserved and overdue praise imo)

at the risk of being canadianist, her voice is not unlike that of sarah mclachlan

(which is fine because sarah mclachlan rules)

I've listened to Ignorance a few times today, and I'm definitely into it. (Hadn't heard of them before "Robber" showed up on 2020 year-end lists.) This is probably reductive, but it reminds me of Wye Oak meets This Is the Kit.

I've seen a few reviews making Kate Bush comparisons and Lindeman herself has mentioned Kate Bush as an influence, which, obviously, a lot of people have been influenced by Kate Bush, but what's cool about Ignorance is that the Kate Bush album it reminds me of most is Aerial -- tonally, melodically, lyrically. Which is great because I love Aerial I can't think of anything else I've heard where it really felt like that album specifically was a big influence.

There was a point earlier in the year when YouTube's algorithms really wanted me to listen to the Weather Station every time I played Cassandra Jenkins.

Is there a "best track" that might convince me?

I love this album. I don't hear Kate Bush's influence.

@djh "Robber"

“Loss” is my fave.

I'm of the minority opinion that her previous stuff was better, particularly the s/t but the new one is good and is so relentlessly ILX oriented (sophistipop, mid period Joni, Ricki Lee Jones etc) and is a good album as well

it's a good album but i'm still a little disappointed it didn't end up being a great one

that's pretty much where I'm at

It's not great, nor does it particularly sound like RLJ or Mitchell, but it's a smart album as exactly as long as it needs to be. Good albums are fine.

to me this is so obviously Fumbling Towards Ecstacy more than anything

The slightly dissonant keyboard flourishes on last track "Look" makes me suspect that Ryan Driver is playing on that track--am a sucker for how Tamara makes use of Kieran Adams' breakbeat drum style, so that track's nicely jumping out at me at first flip-through

Great album, but I hate when we get "deluxe versions" of an album 7-8 months after the original release.

100% agree. Jessie Ware doing this for her last few, when I've bought cds on original release, has been frustrating. Prefer what beabadoobee did, releasing the Our Extended Play EP to follow her last album.

Seems a bit weird in the streaming age... I mean, the deluxe version will supposedly be available for "free" on Spotify?

At least that was the case with Waxahatchee

new album out tomorrow! 'how is it that i should look at the stars'

https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/album/how-is-it-that-i-should-look-at-the-stars

video for the first single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKj6riuag5M

wow a whole album so soon, awesome

guess it's more sparse, but sounds great on first listen

think it was written/recorded around the same time as ignorance, just it's a set of much more stripped down material