![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Tamara-2-1024x945.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
by Kaelen Bell<\/strong><\/p>\n I call Tamara Lindeman just before she\u2019s about to hit the road, and she apologizes that she doesn\u2019t have long to talk. She played POP Montreal last night and is headed to Ottawa to perform again this evening. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Lindeman has been travelling and writing songs as The Weather Station for more than a decade, building a carefully considered body of work that dissects, with delicate tension, the grey areas within and around us. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n It was a winding highway drive, much like the one she\u2019s about to embark on, that inspired one of my favourite of Lindeman\u2019s songs: the tumbling, cyclical \u201cWay It Is, Way It Could Be\u201d from 2015\u2019s <\/span>Loyalty<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s an interesting idea, that very few people are living in the real world. We\u2019re always living partially in our fantasies or fears about the future or the past or the present,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I wrote that song it was a nightmare, \u2018cause I wanted to encapsulate all these ideas about the way it is and the way it could be and I realized that I absolutely couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lindeman says the song is about half moments; she tells me of the time she was on the highway and was sure she\u2019d struck two dogs who\u2019d run across the road. When she looked back, she saw that they were fine, together, cresting a hill. <\/span><\/p>\n She describes that moment of uncertainty, of living in two realities at once, as the impetuous for the song. \u201cThe way it is and the way it could be. For me that song is just so unfinished,\u201d she says. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The track is one of a small handful, like Solange\u2019s \u201cCranes in The Sky\u201d and Kate Bush\u2019s \u201cRunning Up That Hill\u201d, that feels like it could go on forever. I believe Lindeman when she says that the song has more to say. It feels like it\u2019s playing with infinity. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s the freedom to say complex things in a complex way that originally drew Lindeman toward music \u2013 the chance to articulate the unspoken and say what needs to be said when words fail us. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy song \u201cShy Women\u201d, that came out a few years ago, was [always so important to me], like \u2018it means so much to me, why does it mean so much to me?\u2019, and then Jian Ghomeshi happened and #MeToo happened, and I was like, \u2018oh! That\u2019s what this song was about,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThat to me is my best statement on the ability of women to swallow darkness and hold onto it and never tell anyone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lindeman\u2019s 2009 debut,<\/span> The Line, <\/span><\/i>deviates from the music that Lindeman would eventually become known for. It\u2019s more sound collage than folk music, an intensive, personal project that took Lindeman four years to complete. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI painted the cover, I did absolutely everything and had a really clear vision. I taught myself to record by making a record,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n I tell her that I feel a strange connection between <\/span>The Line<\/span><\/i> and her most recent record \u2013 the dynamic, slyly ferocious <\/span>The Weather Station. <\/span><\/i>The driving pulse of her latest seems to call back to the rawness of her debut, perhaps now rendered with more skill and wisdom. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI totally thought that, especially when it was done. I haven\u2019t listened to <\/span>The Line<\/span><\/i> in years, but there\u2019s something there, where I\u2019m like \u2018this is what happens when I\u2019m listening to all of my instinct, this is in some way who I am,\u2019\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n Lindeman says that trying to tap into the willingness to follow her instincts and trust her vision is what led to <\/span>The Weather Station<\/span><\/i>\u2019s raw sound. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis record was just sort of a bunch of words, a bunch of lines, a bunch of improvisations, with me just trying to corral it all into songs that made sense,\u201d she says. \u201cI made the decision to let it be a bit sprawling and a bit messy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Weather Station<\/span><\/i> record feels like an entirely new chapter in Lindeman\u2019s career; self-produced, the music contains a ferocity that was once found only in her lyrics. It\u2019s a reintroduction of sorts, perhaps reflected by the choice to self-title. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI felt that there wasn\u2019t a title that could contain the record, it felt like anything I titled pinned it down to something that it didn\u2019t want to be pinned down to,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt feels like a debut in a lot of ways.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Lindeman explains how she shaped the record to fill the outline she\u2019d created in her head; having the drum player hit the skins just so, a little harder, ignoring the cymbals. She describes the retro approach to the bass, allowing it room to find its own melodies rather than burying it next to the drums.<\/span><\/p>\n She calls the record violent, particularly first single \u201cThirty\u201d. She says it\u2019s about \u201cjoy on the precipice of something darker\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n And after reinvention comes more reinvention; Lindeman says that what comes next will likely tear apart whatever rule book she was following this time around. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think I have a problem with that,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cAny time I get good at doing something I stop doing it. I got good at making soundscapes and stopped doing that. I got good at making gentle folk songs and stopped doing that. I seem to have a problem \u2013 I get comfortable and I\u2019m bored.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She says that what she\u2019s writing now, though she\u2019s hesitant to describe it should her muse shift, sounds like nothing that she\u2019s done before. <\/span><\/p>\n One thing that you can count on is that she will continue to shine a light into the dusty corners, to take a scalpel to things both small and big and find whatever waits inside. She\u2019ll keep finding those half-moments. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more for me to say about the way it is and the way it could be,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Kaelen Bell I call Tamara Lindeman just before she\u2019s about to hit the road, and she apologizes that she doesn\u2019t have long to talk. She played POP Montreal last night and is headed to Ottawa to perform again this evening. Lindeman has been travelling and writing songs as The Weather Station for more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[360,394,453,590,747,806,1354,1029,1104],"class_list":["post-11223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-folk","tag-good-will-social-club","tag-indie","tag-manitoba","tag-pop","tag-rock","tag-the-weather-station","tag-toronto","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11225,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11223\/revisions\/11225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}