The Weather Station isn’t really a band. Rather an observation post. It is from there that Tamara Lindeman watches, observes, comments. And sings the resulting texts, accompanying himself on the piano. Musicians are added as needed. Depending on the context, so to speak according to the weather, the direction of the wind, the range of the sounds, we hear more or less strongly the additions, brass, keyboards, guitar, lap steel.
On the new outdoor stage of the Festival d’été de Québec, installed on the Place de l’Assemblée-Nationale, it is still the unknown. Tamara and her team will arrive from the mythical folk festival of Mariposa, ideal for ambient folk. “We are going to the front, if I may say so. A slight laugh from the very serious Tamara Lindeman on the line. “There is more room for improvisation. My companions and companions come from jazz, they can adapt to all situations. »
It’s not a problem: the albums were also created under different skies. Sometimes almost piano-voice solo, sometimes more intense: “We don’t have any chart successes, the people who follow us are open to everything, we don’t have the obligation to reproduce anything. » Yes, Tamara’s singing is very melodic, but in no way linked to refrains that we could sing. “It’s not impossible to know the songs by heart, but you really have to listen to them a lot, a lot…”
The sung prose
The writing is sparsely rhymed, anchored to nothing but the narrative thread and following observations.
stars, at the heart of the new album, could be read, not like a poem but rather like a diary entry. ” How is it that I should look at the stars? Drive out in the desert in a rental car. And I climb up on the roof and lie in wait. For my eyes to adjust. For some peaceful state. […] It’ll be 2020 tomorrow night. From Salton City, I hear fireworks go off. As though they’re celebrating all another year has cost. Or is it carelessness? Send another star into the sky. Only to watch it die. Fall across the black in a shining arc. I wear to God this world will break my heart. »
That tone. Descriptive, casually identifying a very strong feeling. Helplessness, wonder, anger, sadness. “It’s sung prose. I write a paragraph, not lines. Few or no metaphors: I describe the moment, the things, the course, and what I feel. I change words so that they are less square in pronunciation, but not the content. I write what is. These are not short stories, however. “It remains song, there are arrangements of words that stand out, that we retain separately. Not everything is clear either. You can also let yourself be lulled by the sounds — and the singer’s surprisingly deep voice. “With a song, you always have a choice. Pay attention to meaning, or not. Bathing in the beauty of singing, reacting physically to music, that’s how my favorite artists first touched me. »
Climates for the climate
The Weather Station, in every sense of the name, is all about the weather. Since the first album (The Line, published in 2009), it is for Lindeman and his various collaborators to create favorable climates to evoke the central question of climate change. And the blindness in which the world continues to advance. Comment in Endless Time : “ They don’t put that in the paper, you won’t read it on the news. You have to use your eyes. And it’s so painful how everybody lies. Nobody tells it straight. They try so hard not to meet your gaze. “The urgency is there, The Weather Station reports: “With each passing year, the evidence is more and more brutal. And ever-increasing denial. I try to testify in my own way, which is not a violent way. »
It’s his way. Give the measure of beauty in peril. Without delusion. By being aware of the world and of herself. ” I am lazy. I only want to talk about love “, she sings in To Talk About. ” I am like everybody else. It’s hard to sound the alarm all the time. This is also my point. How to get out of your own inertia? Singing, going on stage, communicating something, that’s what I found best. »