Weather Station - Ignorance

by Zena Grieg

published: 8 / 3 / 2021

Label: Fat Possum
Format: CD

intro

Environmentally-conscious latest album from The Weather Station, the project of Canadian songwriter Tamara Lindeman, which finds her moving away from her acoustic roots

A promising, award-winning actress before turning to music 12 years ago, Canadian Tamara Lindeman, also known by her stage name Tamara Hope, released a series of albums with her band The Weather Station, rooted in indie-folk, characterised by acoustic instrumentation. In contrast, in her latest collection with The Weather station, ‘Ignorance’, Lindeman embraces synths, strings and percussion, making borderline soft rock sprinkled with intuitive, expressive instrumentation. Thematically, ‘Ignorance’ is about break-ups, but Lindeman cleverly uses this as a metaphor for climate change and the existential threat this poses. One of the highlights of this ten-track collection is the jazz-tinged lead single and opener ‘Robber’ with its soaring strings and whimsical saxophone, underscoring her anger at big business misleading the public about the dangers of climate change and profiteering from it: “You never believed in the robber/You thought a robber must hate you to want to take from you…/No, the robber don’t hate you, he had permission/Permission by words, permission of thanks/Permission by laws, permission of banks/White table cloth dinners, convention centers/It was all done real carefully…”. Other highlights include the upbeat ‘Atlantic’ with its gliding flute; the stark piano ballad ‘Trust’ in which she tells of “The crumpled petals and misshapen heads of reeds and rushes,” depicting the destruction by humans of the natural environment, calling urgently for this to be addressed, “While we still have time”; plus the penultimate track ‘Heart’ - “There are many things you may ask of me, but don’t ask me for indifference”; and the closer, the richly layered ‘Subdivisions’, calling into question what was fixed and certain: “The highway disembodied from the rest of my experience/A narrow band of ice that stretched across the disappearance/Of the central plan, the guiding hand/The keeping-up appearance of a life.” On ‘Subdivisions’ Lindeman said: “I think the part I like most… is the second verse, the highway as this narrow thing, stretched across, the disappearance. I think I felt that so many times, where a road pulls you forward and it’s sort of this safe space between unknowns. A forward motion can sometimes be the only thing you have.” Oscillating between the personal and the universal, an album pulsing with energy, spanning genres from pop to jazz, mapped by Lindeman’s contemplative and evocative lyrics, ‘Ignorance’ conjures an existential landscape to be treasured.

Track Listing:-

1 Robber
2 Atlantic
3 Tried to Tell You
4 Parking Lot
5 Loss
6 Separated
7 Wear
8 Trust
9 Heart
10 Subdivisions

Band Links:-

http://www.theweatherstation.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheWeatherStn
https://twitter.com/theweatherstn

Label Links:-

https://www.youtube.com/user/elpossum
https://plus.google.com/+elpossum
http://fatpossum.com/
https://www.facebook.com/FatPossumRecords
https://twitter.com/FatPossum
https://www.instagram.com/fatpossum/