Before we get into anything else, please listen to this album as loud as your device enables as it one of the best sounding albums I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a thing of sonic beauty.
We return to Tamara Lindeman’s The Weather Station and their 7th album, Humanhood. In 2021 we pretty much all loved their 5th album ‘Ignorance’. It was their career changing release and despite the lock down world that championed it, brought Lindeman to mainstream attention. She felt like a new discovery that just happened to have 4 previous albums under her belt.
Her debut album, ‘All of it Was Mine’, released in 2011 was her way of coping with the loss of someone very close in her life. She was not previously a musician, she was always deeply musical but she was an actor. I think it is telling that Lindeman has said of this new release that this is the album that the debut should have been. It is significantly more personally emotional than Ignorance, something that spending a little time with the album and the lyrics will underline.
Before we get into the tracks, a few overview points on the album. This is a 13 track album, that has differing energies through the first two thirds than it’s final third. The spoken word track, Irreversible Damage marks a pivot point in the album and three tracks that follow feel different to the nine that precede it. This is not a negative, just an observation. The tempo drops, the energy changes but the tracks are still beautiful. The final track, ‘Sewing’ is a gorgeous way to end the album.
Lindeman records this album with a 6 piece band comprising the Weather Station. They recorded mostly live as a band though it’s never clear how much is overdubbed? The sound of the album is incredible. I think partly this comes from the (relatively) live recording approach but also the post recording management of the sound. Lindeman gets a co-producer credit but was also critical to the mixing of the album. For me, when I listen to it, I am drawn immediately to the wind instruments that play a huge role in the overall sound. The bass is also a real stand out as is the percussion that is varied and adds drive but also a huge amount of texture to the tracks. There are semi hidden instruments that are easier to pick out after a number of listens and at the right volume , the banjo on the title track is a real stand out.
In terms of stand out tracks … and I am writing this on day 3 of my time with the album;
- Neon Lights is the clear radio friendly ‘single’ and could have sat very comfortably on Ignorance. To anyone with significant experience with Ignorance, they will feel like they are in familiar hands with the way that this track opens up the album.
- Keeping the radio friendly, more traditional rock feel going Neon Lights leads into Miror and then Window. David loves his runs of ridiculous tracks on albums and this trio is a belter. Just because I say ‘radio friendly’ these songs are not conventional radio rock. Lindeman has always sat in the middle of a triangle or rock, folk and jazz and this run of tracks punctuates this point perfectly.
- Track 6 is an ‘instrumental’ interlude of static and synth ambience, it’s only 45 ish seconds and hints that something is about to change.
- And Body Moves is that thing. Is this my favourite track? At the point of writing this it is but there is so much to choose from. This tracks feels so personal, for the writer and for the listener. It’s a truly beautiful experience. Synths are important to this track and they help the track wash over you if you choose … or pull you in if you choose. The backing vocals are a perfect accompaniment to the synths. The instrumentation builds and builds. Always calm but within that calmness is a stunning crescendo of sorts.
- The album moves into ‘Passage’ and then another short interlude and then into the stunning title track. This feels the most urgent track of the album. There is a sense of subtle anxiety that feels new. And perhaps Irreversible Damage is the respite that is required after that escalation. It is a longer, ‘instrumental’ track that has a spoken word element that sits super low in the mix.
- What’s left is three closing tracks, where the energy is lower, calmer, more classicly introspective. You get 2 ballads with Aurora, another shorter interlude between them.
- The final track of the three and of the album is ‘Sewing’. If Body Moves isn’t my favourite track then Sewing is. It could have been written by any of the best songwriters in the past 40 years. It has a timeless quality to it that instantly hits the ears and the emotions. It is to this album what Kintsugi is to Lana’s latest. But for me, it’s placement as the closer suits it’s qualities perfectly. The track is cut in 2 by a climactic synth sound that comes from nowhere and is soon gone. It’s a stunning sonic impulse that is as effective as it is unexpected.
I hope it’s clear that I already love this. I think it’s a stunning record. I think we will all like it. I think at least 2 of us will love it. It’s only January and I would be highly surprised if this is not in our top 10 for this year.
thisisnothappening.net 
It’s nice to have the Weather Station back. For me Ignorance was a slow burner, but when it clicked it had a big impact.
The timing of a album release can be a fine art and I think this release is a great example of this. For me it’s a great January album, it’s slowdown sounds have been very reflective of the January pace. This at times has been a highlight but also at times has made it less accessible. There is an slower pace to this album than we found on Ignorance… the slight shuffle of that album was something that I really liked and I’ve had to adjust.
As Joey has highlighted, there are some real highlights. Neon Signs and Mirror are strong singles whilst Sewing is perfection.
There is an element to this album that it feels raw and fresh. I’d almost liken some of the songs to watching someone paint the song that is in their head, you are on the journey stroke by stroke. Many of the songs feel active, almost unfinished, in a good way. Like they’ll change the next time you revisit. I’ve read a few reviews that have both mentioned the album sounds unsettled which is an interesting view. I wonder if they mean the same as I’m experiencing?
The album is getting great reviews, which is excellent to see. I need to spend more time with it as it hasn’t fully clicked, but they’re not forced listens, they are from interest and curiosity.
What an extraordinary album this is. Every time I listen – and boy have I listened, I find something new. It’s so interesting the way this feels like a progression from Ignorance – because it’s not as if it’s radically different: there is the same intricate band arrangements, hushed production, and beautiful songs that take their time to unfurl upon repeated listens.
But this IS a progression. It’s pushing what she does into further sonic landscape, helped a lot I think by a recording process that focuses on the band playing live. It makes it feel like a captivating listen, and even the quieter moments have an electricity to them. What a skill it is to have captured these songs so carefully and yet given them such life.
And what songs! There are plenty here that stand toe to toe with Tamara’s finest creations. It’s another one of those records where the run from 1-4 (including the lovely Track 1 intro inviting us in) are amongst the finest on an album I can remember. Neon Signs we’ve already been loving for a while. Mirror – bloody hell, a brooding classic that sounds like it’s always existed, and then the urging, insistent Window. Elsewhere, Body Moves is a gorgeous ballad and the title tracks, Humanhood is a passionate, loose-limbed workout (and that banjo, yes please!). Even the experimental spoken word track, Irreversible Damage, works really well – contributing to a record that feels like a perfectly constructed vision that delivers from beginning to end.
It’s only just February, and Tamara Lindeman has laid down the gauntlet – come at me, fellow artists, and see if you can better this. It’ll take quite a record to do so…
Last to the party on this one, but no means least, I hope.
What a gift this record is at this time of year. I agree with Nolan on that wholeheartedly, that January feels the perfect time to let it envelop you.
We hoped a new Tamara Lindeman record was coming when Neon Signs arrived in October last year, but it wasn’t nailed down until the end of the year. Hopes were high, with its brilliant video and throwing back to just how much we all loved Ignorance. A pod favourite, and a slow-burner that introduced me to The Weather Station’s brilliance. Another band I never would’ve enjoyed without Joey bringing it to Episode 10 back in April 2021.
That took a while to get its claws into me, so much so that I was semi-exasperated on the pod at the time, but my epiphany happened post-record and pre-episode, so I lost my most blunt responses in the edit. By the time it’d been out a week I was smitten. Funny how you can’t always control how things get their tendrils into you.
So absolutely no one will be surprised when I say it’s a similar trip this time. Not as confused, because I love The Weather Station now, but still waiting for that full infatuation. There’s no good reason for it either, really. Perhaps there’s so much good music out in the last few months (Hi, Josh Tillman, Crazy P, Ela Minus, Lambrini Girls for starters) that it is fighting for airspace. Perhaps its so delicate, so gossamer thin sometimes, that it has floated over me rather than fully wrapped me up. But I’m ok with it, as I know it’ll get me in the end. It has to.
There’s something of the unfurling flower in spring with Tamara Lindeman’s work, so I’m not rushing it, just letting it happen, as the days get longer and the nights shorter. Because there’s so much to love about this record. And not much more I can add that’s not already been said. From the almost orchestral tune-up of Descent that ushers in Neon Signs (so cleverly used in the song’s superb video), the album’s touchstone, you are in deep from the start. However, as high a song as that is, it perhaps takes some time to navigate around. So often I’ve been on my walks, swims or find my mind wandering to the album, and this song repeats above all else. Such a tour de force can overtake the rest for a while. It’s definitely how I found it. And I also find Ignorance jostling for my attention still, too (so much so, I bought it on vinyl).
Once you’re over that, songs emerge from the ether one by one. Mirror’s concoction of keys, bass and percussion, then woodwind and strings, a much more ambitious sound in many places than the tighter and more focused Ignorance. There’s much more of a freedom here – outlined brilliantly in the Sheroes podcast that Joey rightly insisted we listen to – with an ever more confident Lindeman at the heart of everything. Window is the other big single (for me) of the album, one that’s perhaps most bridging the gap to Ignorance, but even then the flutes and percussion feel a step further into something broader and richer.
Here we have synths, banjos (oh Joey), and more expansive arrangements that seem to grow the sound of the band. Because, my god, it’s an unbelievable outfit. Yes, it’s Lindeman at the centre, but she’s assembled such a tight and yet free-flowing outfit that can realise her songs with such lightness and richness. Hearing that so much of it was ‘live’ makes sense. It feels like songs dissolve into each other, a vibrating whole. And reminds me of the night spent in awe at the Brudenell watching her in the Ignorance Tour.
There are some ‘buts’ though. The album does have less pace and perhaps takes longer to get into as a result. The second half, while no less atmospheric, is slower and less immediately attention grabbing. Every song is impressive, but after the opening, it has such a high bar to stay level with. The title track is a thing of beauty, and Irreversible Damage, a spoken word track that feels much closer to In Rainbows-era Radiohead (a huge compliment!) than Fleetwood Mac, is really interesting. But Lonely does lose a bit of something before the closing track, Sewing, regains all of it. An incredibly powerful song that is so light that it almost fades like mist, musing on the imperfect reality of life. It’s one of her finest records.
I do have familiar struggles with the lyrics. Perhaps a symptom of my dancefloor-dissipated hearing (thanks, hi-hats) and a fascinating scientific pronouncement by Lindeman on Sheroes, that perhaps this isn’t going to sound how I’m used to. But I have to listen loud to pick them up, and that’s not always a situation I have. And I think the lyrics, while the album has washed over me many many times already in delight, is what I need to attach fully to it.
But I know it’ll come. It definitely will. And I look forward to that day.