After releasing her ambitious full-band album, Ignorance, last year, The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman made a surprise side-step with its follow-up, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars.
Released in March, just 13 months after Ignorance originally dropped, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars presents a very different Weather Station. With a stripped-back, live approach and not afraid of silence, the intimate album creates a very different mood to its predecessor.
“I just thought it would be a beautiful record,” Tamara says of her approach to recording the starker 10-track release. “I really just had this sensation when I thought of the music of wanting to capture a feeling of falling, or weightlessness, of being in water or air, and a feeling of just suspended tension.”
It was initially a collection of hushed ballads she felt she needed to record, yet she had no idea whether they’d see the light of day.
“It was really because it was a little passion project that I didn’t think I would release it – I was really just self-indulgent, making this really quiet peaceful little record, kind of for myself. It was also an excuse to work with those musicians, and I wanted to experience making a record live – singing and playing live – and having that be a performance that’s committed to, whether you like every single word and the way that you sang it or not. So that was important to me too – a really good exercise in concentration and focus.”
Part of the album’s appeal is its genuine spontaneity. With key figures from Toronto’s jazz/improvisation scene – Christine Bougie (guitar and lap steel), Karen Ng (saxophone and clarinet), Ben Whiteley (upright bass), Ryan Driver (piano, flute, and vocals), and Tania Gill (Wurlitzer, Rhodes, and pianet) – many of the recordings capture the musicians’ initial responses to hearing Tamara playing material for the first time.
“The first song, Marsh, that was a beautiful iteration. We hadn’t rehearsed that song. I hadn’t finished it. I didn’t know that was a song.
“I don’t know … there’s this weird song that goes along, and it’s the same, but there’s this other part!” she laughs, recalling how she presented Marsh. “But we had this time, so why don’t I write some charts, we’ll play it and hit record?
“And that first take is me playing that song in front of the band for the first time, and considering to myself – is this a song?
“I did subtractively edit, I did change the solo a bit, but it was beautiful, hearing the band’s response to hearing the song for the first time, and my response to hearing their performance. There are some mistakes – I say the wrong lyrics, twice – but I love it. I love how that comes across.”
If the lauded Ignorance marked a turning point for The Weather Station, How Is It… seems to make another statement entirely. But looking ahead, Tamara reckons her next album will be more in keeping with the spirit and musical direction of Ignorance.
“How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is an extra thing,” she states. “I still don’t see it as the next move, you know? My next move will be more full, more embodied; it’ll be another big record.
“But I can imagine myself succumbing to the temptation, every time I make a new record, to make the other little ghost record in addition, because it’s like a palette cleanser after you’ve worked so hard on a mix and master that’s so complete, and to then just do something else.”
Recorded over three days in the spring of 2020, the songs that made it to How Is It… were penned simultaneously as those that made it to Ignorance. “It was a time of intense creativity, and I wrote more songs than I ever had in my life,” explains the songwriter. “Songs kept appearing.”
As a result, both albums share similar themes, which range from the personal (loss, vulnerability) to anxiety about the climate crisis and how the songwriter has struggled with her ignorance of the impending global disaster.
“My feelings on those records are really tangled and complex,” she says, adding she is particularly grateful to have a platform to explore climate issues.
Asked how climate concerns may shape her own career decisions, she says: “It’s really tough. When I went into this [album/tour] cycle, I had a presentation of intent to my booking agents, where I don’t want to fly very much: Can we be really intentional about how we tour, like a tour is long? So if we’re going out and we’re driving across countries or flying to Europe, can we make it long and make it count, so we’re not driving all over the place and going back and forth and sideways?
“And the sad thing is that we planned intentional tours that did that. But then, with Covid, things go bunched into multiple pieces, and we weren’t able to realise that vision.
“It was always imperfect anyways. I don’t see myself as someone who is campaigning for artists to change the way they tour. It seems fairly unimportant when compared to the bigger battles. But I did try.”
However, she already has her eye on Volkswagen’s much-anticipated electric van, the soon-to-arrive ID. Buzz (“I would love to be an early adopter of an electric van in the future. That would be cool,” she enthuses), and next month takes part in The Big Climate Thing event in New York – joining the likes of The Flaming Lips, War On Drugs, Sheryl Crow, Courtney Barnett, The Roots and Haim, to raise awareness.
“I can’t say what it will do,” she says of the three-day event. “But I definitely think that it could be a beautiful thing: to gather together in a stadium, with people who care – to feel that solidarity, even for a moment, would be good.”
Looking ahead, Tamara continues her interrupted and unplanned staggering Ignorance tour (with appearances including Birmingham’s Moseley Folk and Arts Festival on Friday 2 September 2022), hopes to do some shows around How Is It …, and already has her sights set on the next album.
“I haven’t had a lot of time, but I have a lot of songs and am at the imagining phase for the next record. Hopefully, I’ll be starting to plan to record and demo soon.”
The Weather Station appears at Moseley Folk and Arts Festival, Birmingham (Friday 2 to Sunday 4 September 2022). Information: moseleyfolk.co.uk
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