Saint Aardvark
The slow, every-building feeling of quiet menace in "Robber" is deeply unsettling and utterly unforgettable. But every song on this album just *glows*. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Favorite track: Robber.
Nice album with polished arrangements and good music, I think that the best definition that I’ve found around is: art-pop.
The only weak point of this record is that the lyrics are not always so polished and refined as the music: I find them, sometimes, a bit naïve.
A part the well-known Robber, a special mention to Heart that I’ve really appreciated: despite no chorus is there, it has a good vibes and groove.
Favorite track: Separated.
Ignorance, the new album by the The Weather Station, begins enigmatically; a hissing hi hat, a stuttering drum beat. A full minute passes before the entry of Tamara Lindeman’s voice, gentle, conversational, intoning; “I never believed in the robber”. A jagged music builds, with stabbing strings, saxophone, and several layers of percussion, and the song undulates through five minutes of growing tension, seesawing between just two chords. Once again, Toronto songwriter Tamara Lindeman has remade what The Weather Station sounds like; once again, she has used the occasion of a new record to create a new sonic landscape, tailor-made to express an emotional idea. Ignorance, Lindeman’s debut for Mississippi label Fat Possum Records, is sensuous, ravishing, as hi fi a record as Lindeman has ever made, breaking into pure pop at moments, at others a dense wilderness of notes; a deeply rhythmic, deeply painful record that feels more urgent, more clear than her work ever has.
On the cover, Lindeman lays in the woods, wearing a hand made suit covered in mirrors. She was struck by the compulsion to build a mirror suit on tour one summer, assembling it in a hotel room in PEI and at a friend’s place in Halifax. “I used to be an actor, now I’m a performer” she says. In those roles, she points out, she often finds herself to be the subject of projection, reflecting back the ideas and emotions of others. On the album, she sings of trying to wear the world as a kind of ill fitting, torn garment, dangerously cold; “it does not keep me warm / I cannot ever seem to fasten it” and of walking the streets in it, so disguised, so exposed. Photographed by visual artist Jeff Bierk in midday, the cover purposefully calls to mind Renaissance paintings; with rich blacks and deep colour, and an incongruous blue sky glimpsed through the trees.
The title of the album, Ignorance, feels confrontational, calling to mind perhaps wilful ignorance, but Lindeman insists she meant it in a different context. In 1915 Virginia Woolfe wrote: “the future is dark, which is the best thing a future can be, I think.” Written amidst the brutal first world war, the darkness of the future connoted for Woolfe a not knowing, which by definition holds a sliver of hope; the possibility for something, somewhere, to change. In french, the verb ignorer connotes a humble, unashamed not knowing, and it is this ignorance Lindeman refers to here; the blank space at an intersection of hope and despair, a darkness that does not have to be dark.
credits
released February 5, 2021
All Songs Written by Tamara Lindeman
Produced by Tamara Lindeman & Marcus Paquin
Engineered by Jeremy Darby & Julian Decorte
Overdubs recorded by Marcus Paquin, Tamara Lindeman
Mixed by Marcus Paquin
Mastered by Joao Carvalho
Recorded in Spring 2019 at Canterbury Studios, Toronto, ON, Canada
Musicians:
Kieran Adams - Drums, Percussion
Christine Bougie - Guitar
Ryan Driver - Flute
Ian Kehoe - Percussion
Tamara Lindeman - Vocals, Piano, Guitar, Moog, Pianet, Wurlitzer
Philippe Melanson - Percussion
Marcus Paquin - Percussion
Johnny Spence - Piano, Organ, Wurlitzer, Moog, Juno
Brodie West - Saxophone
Ben Whiteley - Bass, Guitar
Felicity Williams - Harmony vocals on 3, 9
String Arrangements by Tamara Lindeman (1,3,4,6,7), Owen Pallett (7,8)
As I listen to this album more and more I start discover aspects that I hadn't felt before. My love for every individual track continues to grow, but Change has remained in my heart as a deep drive to get me through the day. seonghi
My god, what an absolutely incredible Suite. I'll admit, I've struggled to get into Pharoah Sanders due to diving headfirst into some of his most challenging catalogue and that never worked. This is the perfect place to restart. Floating Points is new for me and I can honestly say I've never heard synthesizer music this lush and organic before. the LSO is just perfect. This is one of those albums that any serious music fan needs in their life. The perfect swan song for the great Pharaoh! 5/5 ClassyMusicSnob