Tamara Lindeman is prolific. Not content with releasing one of the defining albums of 2021, the universally lauded Ignorance, she has given us a second record that is, albeit in different ways, equally powerful and just as much of a curveball. The songs on How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars, the new record by the Weather Station, the four-piece band that Lindeman fronts, recall the keyboard-led, almost freestyle parts of her fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell’s discography. Yes, she is that good and that significant.
As with Ignorance, the follow-up addresses climate change, both directly and through the use of metaphor and analogy. Again, the anger and frustration are palpable.
On the opening, Marsh, quietude and contemplation brush up against pragmatism. “At the bottom of the hill,” Lindeman sings, “a muddy river overflowed, and a swamp in the eddy had filled the ditch with bulrushes and reeds, black water puckers with bodies”. Later, real life intrudes. “When they hold the election, this argument may end.”
How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars is, Lindeman says, “a companion piece [to Ignorance]; the moon to its sun”. If the former — on which jazz collided with Fleetwood Mac-like textures and hints of Abba — confounded expectations shaped by perceptions of Lindeman as primarily a folk musician, the new album is another handbrake turn.
The two albums may be linked thematically, but the contrast musically is so stark, it’s amazing to learn that the songs on both were written concurrently. “Having that other outlet where I could have this extra batch of songs helped my writing,” the 37-year-old says. “I needed to get these things out too. It’s just that they were too earnest, for lack of a better word, too pretty, almost.”
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Ignorance earned a hitherto quintessentially niche artist a much larger following. This brought her praise, of course, and, as Lindeman’s remarks indicate, her self-deprecating self-awareness is too beady to be ravished or distracted by acclaim.
“I do have that reflexive thing of, ‘Oh, please don’t,’ ” she says. “I’d be sad if no one liked my music. But there is a difference between praise and when people have a response like you had with Marsh, which makes me so happy. To me that doesn’t even feel like praise, it’s about knowing that your work has connected with someone.”
How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars is out now
