The Weather Station
Humanhood (Fat Possum)
Contact Jessica Linker, Jaycee Rockhold about The Weather Station
The cover of Humanhood, the forthcoming record from The Weather Station, depicts Tamara Lindeman, crouching in darkness, draped in blankets which portray wrinkled facsimiles of her own image. The effect is almost mythological; like some ritual is taking place. The drawing together of the disparate parts of self; perhaps, the way an identity or personhood can warp and ripple. At the edge of the frame, the photo falls off to black, and title and band name are scrawled, almost unintelligibly. Gone is the suit of broken mirrors; replaced with something softer, stranger, more textural. After finding breakout success with 2021’s Ignorance, a “heartbroken masterpiece” (The Guardian) Lindeman returns to the same musical intersection; the meeting place between disco drums and abstract percussion, new music sax and folk melody – and attempts to push the envelope outwards in every direction.
Humanhood is radiant and propulsive; discursive and strange. Songs dissemble into washes of strings, fall apart completely. Textures coalesce and fragment, harden into songs; give way again to abstract instrumental passages which carry the listener from song to song. It’s a record of intense details; piano notes disintegrating into static, fiddle materializing out of a cloud of cymbals. Clear, powerful pop songs, some of the most satisfying Lindeman has ever written; fade into view or arrive all of a sudden; before abrupt turns, tonal shifts, acid wash synth fadeouts. It’s the weirdest Weather Station record yet – and the most visceral. It’s also the strongest, the most cinematic, the most complete as an evocation of an inner landscape. Each song mirrors, sonically and musically, the state of mind described in the lyric; moving from distant to claustrophobic, overwhelming to beautiful. Listened front to back, the album transcribes a journey from dissociation back towards connection; a journey echoed in form, in sound, and lyric – and in the making of the record itself.
“People fall apart when the narrative does” she says; “but that’s also where there is an opening.” Seeing the world as it is, for Lindeman, means letting go of the fantasy, contending with darkness; it also means drawing together contrast, multiplicity; imperfection and nuance. The patchwork quilt is a metaphor, an action, and also – something which can keep you warm. As the song ends, a weaving, questioning clarinet solo is obscured by an enormous wave of synth which seems to wash away all the sound. Then, the song unexpectedly continues. “I’m walking from side to side / I’m taking pictures of the sky again” she sings – at the beginning of a new paradigm.
