THE WEATHER STATION ANNOUNCES HOW IS IT THAT I SHOULD LOOK AT THE STARS, COMPANION ALBUM TO IGNORANCE, OUT MARCH 4, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “ENDLESS TIME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “ENDLESS TIME” HERE
2022 TOUR DATES BEGIN FEBRUARY 12
PRE-SAVE HOW IS IT THAT I SHOULD LOOK AT THE STARS HERE
“Tamara Lindeman’s shape-shifting avant-folk reaches a kind of apex on [Ignorance], as she sings coolly about climate grief, love, lust, healing, and the upheaval of self-discovery.”
- New Yorker, Album of the Year (Amanda Petrusich)
“Whether they deal with romantic loss or the perils of climate change, the songs on The Weather Station’s Ignorance are concerned with grief and carried by a calm, penetrative air of desperation. Lindeman’s ache is exquisite.” - The Globe and Mail, Album of the Year (Brad Wheeler)
“In the lush, dewy arrangements and Lindeman's sterling songcraft is the suggestion of a way forward in the fight for our world and for ourselves, proposed with a clarity and vulnerability that still feels like a gift. If the world is right and good — and granted, it often isn't — Ignorance will be remembered for a long while, as both a towering artistic achievement and a document of a time when there was still something worth saving.” - Exclaim! , #2 Best Album of 2021
“How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? [The Weather Station] came up with a winning solution on her stirring album Ignorance, which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet.” - The New York Times, Best Albums of 2021
“ The album effortlessly connects our relationship with the planet to our relationships with each other — poetic breakup songs that pull double duty. It’s the intimacy of small moments that Lindeman is best at detailing, and it's why Ignorance resonates so personally: she takes the emotional side of climate change and places it in the palm of your hand.” - CBC Music, Best Albums of 2021
“After [Ignorance], it seems, Tamara Lindeman can do anything.” - Pitchfork, #7 Best Album of 2021
Photo Credit: Brendan Ko // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
One year ago, The Weather Station released Ignorance, one of 2021’s most praised and far-reaching albums. Today, Tamara Lindeman announces How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, a new album out March 4 on Next Door Records, and presents its lead single/video, “Endless Time”. How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is intended to be heard as a companion piece to Ignorance. These are songs written at the same time that connect emotionally and deal with many of the same themes: disconnection and conflict, love, birds, and climate feelings. Recorded live in just three days, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is achingly intimate; full of breath, silence, and detail.
“When I wrote Ignorance, it was a time of intense creativity, and I wrote more songs than I ever had in my life. The songs destined to be on the album were clear from the beginning, but as I continued down my writing path, songs kept appearing that had no place on the album I envisioned. Songs that were simple, pure; almost naive. Songs that spoke to many of the same questions and realities as Ignorance, but in a more internal, thoughtful way.” Lindeman elaborates, “So I began to envision How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, a quiet, strange album of ballads. I imagined it not as a followup to Ignorance, but rather as a companion piece; the moon to its sun.”
Not long after completing Ignorance, Lindeman decided to make this album on her own terms, fronting the money herself and not notifying the labels. She assembled a new band, and communicated a new ethos; the music should feel ungrounded, with space, silence, and sensitivity above all else. On this record, there are no drums, no percussion; in the absence of rhythm, time stretches and becomes elastic. With Christine Bougie on guitar and lap steel, Karen Ng on saxophone and clarinet, Ben Whiteley on upright bass, Ryan Driver on piano, flute, and vocals, and Tania Gill on wurlitzer, rhodes, and pianet, the band comprised some of the best players in the Toronto jazz and improvisation scene.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was recorded live off the floor at Toronto’s Canterbury Music Studios from March 10-12, 2020. With Jean Martin co-producing, Lindeman sang and played piano live while the band improvised their accompaniment. When the band entered the studio, Covid-19 was a news item, not front of mind, but just three days later, everything had changed. On today’s “Endless Time”, Lindeman sings about a feeling of unease, interweaving relational loss with anxiety about the impending climate crisis. She wonders whether she would look back on the present moment as one of unnoticed abundance as she repeats in the song ‘it’s only the end / of an endless time’. Lindeman comments, “In Toronto, I live in a world of overwhelming abundance; fruits and fresh vegetables flown in year round from Chile, California, Malaysia. Standing outside a neighbourhood fruit stand one day, I found myself wondering how I would look back on this time from the future; if I would someday remember it as a time of abundance and wealth I did not fully comprehend at the time, and I wondered how it would feel to stand at that threshold of change. I wondered too if we were not already there. The song was written long before the pandemic, but when we recorded it, on March 11, 2020, it began to feel eerily prescient. The day it was recorded truly was the end of an endless time, and as ever, I don’t know how the song knew. Somehow, the music captures that instability; it is ungrounded and diaphanous, it floats and drifts.”
WATCH / SHARE “ENDLESS TIME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “ENDLESS TIME” HERE
You might argue that the underlying theme of Ignorance was vulnerability; vulnerability that goes unnoticed and unacknowledged, and the damage that results from that erasure. On How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, this vulnerability is made manifest. It is an album of immense sensitivity, a recording of a band and a person daring to reach towards softness without apology.
The Weather Station embark on a long-awaited tour next month in support of Ignorance and How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars. Shows prior to February 12 have been moved later in spring. All shows are on sale now here.
HOW IS IT THAT I SHOULD LOOK AT THE STARS TRACKLIST:
1. Marsh
2. Endless Time
3. Taught
4. Ignorance
5. To Talk About
6. Stars
7. Song
8. Sway
9. Sleight of Hand
10. Loving You
THE WEATHER STATION TOUR DATES:
Sat. Feb. 12, 2022 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour &
Sun. Feb. 13, 2022 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent &
Tue. Feb. 15, 2022 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios &
Thu. Feb. 17, 2022 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern &
Sat. Feb. 19, 2022 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room ^
Mon. Feb. 21, 2022 - Denver, CO @ Globe Hall ^
Wed. Feb. 23, 2022 - Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club ^
Thu. Feb. 24, 2022 - Madison, WI @ High Noon ^
Fri. Feb. 25, 2022 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall ^
Tue. Mar. 15, 2022 - Brighton, UK @ Komedia
Wed. Mar. 16, 2022 - Bristol, UK @ Thekla
Thu. Mar. 17, 2022 - Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Fri. Mar. 18, 2022 - Dublin, IE @ Workmans Club
Sat. Mar. 19, 2022 - Belfast, UK @ Black Box
Mon. Mar. 21, 2022 - Glasgow, UK @ Mono
Tue. Mar. 22, 2022 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Wed. Mar. 23, 2022 - London, UK @ Scala
Fri. Mar. 25, 2022 - Brussels, BE @ Botanique
Sat. Mar. 26, 2022 - Paris, FR @ La Boule Noire
Sun. Mar. 27, 2022 - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Noord
Mon. Mar. 28, 2022 - Berlin, DE @ Frannz Club
Wed. Mar. 30, 2022 - Copenhagen, DK @ Loppen
Thu. Mar. 31, 2022 - Oslo, NO @ Bla
Fri. Apr. 1, 2022 - Stockholm, SE @ Debaser / Bar Brooklyn
Sat. Apr. 2, 2022 - Gothenburg, SE @ Oceanen
Mon. Apr. 4, 2022 - Hamburg, DE @ Nochtwache
Tue. Apr. 5, 2022 - Cologne, DE @ Blue Shell
Wed. Apr. 6, 2022 - Munich, DE @ Milla
Thu. Apr. 7, 2022 - Zurich, CH @ Bogen F
Sat. Jun. 11, 2022 - Barcelona, ES @ Primavera
Thu. Jun. 16, 2022 - Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo
&= w/ Cassandra Jenkins
^= w/ Helena Deland
*= w/ Sam Amidon
