The Weather Station at Band on the Wall

The Weather Station – the project of Toronto-based songwriter Tamara Lindeman – returns with new album Humanhood this January, ahead of a European tour that includes a date at Manchester’s Band on the Wall.

The last few years have seen The Weather Station release two albums: the career defining Ignorance (2021) and its ethereal, mostly live-recording companion piece, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars (2022). Described by The Guardian as “a heartbroken masterpiece”, Ignorance drew upon the natural world as well as inner landscapes to create unforgettable moments of calm and beauty, breaking into pure pop at times, and at others, inviting the listener into a dense wilderness of notes and rhythm.

The follow-up How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was written in the same fruitful winter of songwriting, and featured songs that Lindeman felt were too internal, too soft to fit on the previous album. On this record, there were no drums, no percussion; in the absence of rhythm, time stretched and became elastic, while the lyrics returned to what has become a hallmark of Lindeman’s writing; a description of a single moment and all the meaning it might encompass. In the words of Pitchfork, “her writing can feel … like the collected epiphanies from a lifetime of observing”.

This January brings The Weather Station’s seventh album, Humanhood, from which we’ve heard a couple of singles so far. Returning to the full band energy of Ignorance, ‘Neon Signs’ is an atmospheric, piano-driven rocker written when Lindeman was “feeling confused, upside down, at that moment when even desire falls away, and dissociation cuts you loose from a story that while wrong, still held things together.” ‘Window’ feels more experimental, almost mystical, full of slashing guitars, spiralling electronics and otherworldly flute.

According to a press release, the rest of 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.”

We can’t wait to hear the full record in January, and to catch The Weather Station live at Band on the Wall on 11 March.