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How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars

by The Weather Station

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1.
Marsh 04:30
The year was unrelenting, we argued all the time. I obliterate your positions, and you know just how to obliterate mine. Online, we talk, or say we talk, mute and block. I should turn this thing off, I know I should give it up, So I took a walk down the road, and at the bottom of the hill, a muddy river overflowed, and a swamp in the eddy had filled the ditch with bullrushes and reeds, black water puckers with bodies. Water striders, mosquitoes pierce my jeans. I try to really see the beauty, the blue and green, and light green, and yellow green, and blue green and grey green, and muddy green - but all I can see today is black. Like the new moon sky. Like when you close your eyes - those stars don’t guide you anywhere. But there is no other there, that I have found so far, no any other anywhere, but here. Now it falls, the first tear. And when they hold the election, this argument may end. But everything depends on it still, if we don’t argue they will. I can’t even watch the starlings fly when I know I can’t can’t count even on this, tangle of grasses. The chance is this. Everything balanced on a kiss. Penetration of peel and pith. A body puckers the surface to take a breath -
2.
Endless Time 04:20
It’s only the end of an endless time. I wake up in my own bed, the curtains open wide, to let in what light the sky has to offer today. It’s only the end of an endless time. They don’t put that in the paper, you won’t hear it on the news. But we knew. It’s just like a sunset about to begin. Maybe at first, you can’t believe your eyes; the sky all lit with colour and light. It’s just the same, as right before you left, we would stay up late, your head on my chest. We were so in love, and the sun went on making flowers from the mud. We could walk out on the street and buy roses from Spain, lemons and persimmons in December rain. All of our lives it had been that way. But it’s only the end of an endless time. They don’t put that in the paper you won’t read it in 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. We can still walk out on the street and buy champagne grapes, strawberries and lilies in November rain. It never occurred to us to have to pay. But it’s only the end of an endless time. We laughed so much we wore lines around our eyes. You can see it in that picture of us from long ago; how we changed. And it happened so slowly, we couldn’t even say. I gotta find that picture, I want to look again. I used to think that I could see everything that met my eyes.
3.
Taught 02:50
In another life - I might trust you in the way I cannot in this one. My t-shirt was wet upon my back, as you insisted you’re so kind to me. You tell me, so it must be so. But in another life - I might reach out to touch, and feel only calm. Because I learn what I am taught. But I learn what I am taught. And the body is beyond thought. And so. Close your eyes. Go ahead and pretend it is how you see me best. I brush the water from my skin, and I walk straight back in to the river I was swimming in. While the swallows go on singing, all the same songs that they always did.
4.
Ignorance 02:30
I was woken up in the early morning after my flight, by a sound I could not grasp, I did not recognize. Running like water, two toned, and tangled like a wire, flowing, jangled, many sounds at once. “It was a magpie”, you told me, as you handed me a coffee, “the black and white bird you see in city parks.” And you pointed out the window - looking straight in at me - a black and white bird sitting on the fence. I thought about the man who called it a magpie; confronted by the great expanse of his ignorance, he wanted to name it, to detain it, forever in that small phrase. It seemed like a shame, to give it a name. But then again, I don’t understand anything the way I’m supposed to. I drag every river for meaning, scrape my hand on every ceiling. I never know what to say or not say, what to honour or betray in any given day. But I never got used to the sound of the magpie it set my skin on edge, it called like a child like a dog like the wind caught in a fence. When we talked it interrupted, and I would never know what it meant.
5.
I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. I know there is so much, that I should try and say, but we lay in bed, and leave it unsaid. I’m tired of working all night long, trying to fit this world into a song. I am lazy, I only want to talk about you. I spend all day with people who don’t think the way you do. When I’m tired of unravelling all their endless kinds of truth; oh I only want to talk about you. I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. What good are words if not to try and and get across, this river that ascends me every time we touch, and to obliterate all this distance I get so tired of. I am tired, I only want to lie beside my lover tonight. When there is too much midnight to ever express, to listen to his breath, and to lay again my head on his chest. I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. Sometimes it feels like the only thing anybody wants me to speak of. Nobody wants to drag themselves through the endless ruins of all there is in this world that is not love -
6.
Stars 03:33
How is it that I should look at the stars? I drove 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. When I was a child, my mother would send me outside, on a moonless night, to receive the light cast out in some ancient storm. With a woollen blanket to keep me warm. So overwhelmed by the beauty of the stars. How could I not be? But, how should I look at the stars tonight? At a million suns? None of them mine. Nowhere up there is a place like this. Not one waterfall, no river mist. I felt dizzy, my chest clenched cold and tight. 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 swear to god this world will break my heart.
7.
Song 02:05
I woke up thinking of a song that I could write. A song to pull the dream up from my night. All day I felt so light, and wild colour bled along the road, in the fields along the fences as we drove along. I was thinking of my song. And what I’d place inside, if I could bury light, in something I could write. Would it explain to you this white moon, hanging high above the motel room? The last gasp of longing that I stretch my hand towards, as though to steal from the moment some souvenir of words. I woke up thinking of a song that I could write.
8.
Sway 02:45
You came upstairs in a rush, your headphones on. You had to play me this song, you said, I had to hear it. The music struck me strange; but when the drums came in you swayed, turning back to me laughing, and I move too, I move too, I move too, to undo some static in the air, the mood I was in, the dust there on the stairs the mess left in the kitchen, the ways I will never know you, and how you may never know me, our many if only’s - I move too, when I watch you move, too, I want to move too, when I watch you dance. You fling your hands, you laugh and laugh, high above the street, nobody gets to see you dance like this but me. When you sway, I sway, and if I could love you more I have not yet found a way.
9.
I’m pretty tired of this sleight of hand. Do you think I don’t know the difference? Do I not deserve the real thing? Matches that do not light a fire, and candles that do not burn, only flicker on in the cafes at night. I have tried to be good. I only ever wanted to be understood. I thought it was kind that I should play along. And when they light the sign, I applaud. But I’m pretty tired of this bait and switch. I don’t wanna have to smile when I open my gift, and there’s nothing inside it. You never wanted to be good, you never really wanted to be understood. You wanted to be the one who held the cards. And for me to watch you draw the king of hearts. But I’m pretty tired of this sleight of hand. The king is queen and the queen is jack. And I am meant to be laugh, to be glad that you fooled me.
10.
Loving You 02:50
When you give your love, you give all your love. You have held me up, when I was not feeling strong. It’s enough. You don’t have to do so much. I can help you too - loving you, that’s what my heart’s supposed to do. Now I have broken through. I’m closer to loving you. In my life, I’ve lived beside the border line, now I have broken through. I’m closer to loving you. Loving you. I’m on my way to loving you. Now that I’m well and able to. I’m on my way to loving you.

credits

released March 4, 2022

Produced by Tamara Lindeman & Jean Martin
Engineered by Jeremy Darby & Julian Decorte
Mixed by Jean Martin
Mastered by Joao Carvalho

This album was recorded live off the floor March 10th, 11th, and 12th 2020, at Canterbury Music in Toronto.

Performed by:
Christine Bougie - Guitar, Lap Steel
Ryan Driver - Piano, Flute, Vocals
Tania Gill - Wurlitzer, Pianet
Tamara Lindeman - Piano, Vocals
Karen Ng - Saxophone, Clarinet
Ben Whiteley - Upright Bass

Additional vocals recorded by Jean Martin
Piano on track 5 recorded by Tamara Lindeman
Track 4 arrangement by Tamara Lindeman, notated by Tania Gill.
All other arrangements improvised by the band.

All songs written by Tamara Lindeman, except Track 10, which was written by John Southworth.

Cover photo by Jeff Bierk
Layout by Hugo Bernier
C&P 2022 Fat Possum Records LLC

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The Weather Station Toronto, Ontario

I write songs about things that exist.

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