The Weather Station
AD’s Notes:
The Weather Station were a new discovery for me this year; combing through a massive pile of submissions, I came upon their songs and was instantly charmed. I’m glad to be able to present them this year, and hope you’ll check out these great young artists.
Bio:
Music is, in essence, a revolt against silence. Tamara Lindeman was not a musician when she decided to make music. But, reeling from a personal loss, she found the usual avenues of expression insufficient. In the absence of talk, she found herself curiously drawn to sound. On a whim, she borrowed her roommates recording equipment. What poured forth was nothing less than a cri de couer. A “post traumatic dreamscape”, in the words of Simon Borer, a band member. Alone in her room, she marshalled banjo, guitar, scissors, pots, pans – whatever she could find to give voice to the lunar landscape of loss.
The story of The Weather Station, though, is not just that of someone alone in her bedroom. Coming from vastly different musical backgrounds, Jack Donovan, Simon Borer, and Dwight Schenk joined forces with Lindeman to re-invent The Weather Station as a powerful live band. In the past year, this band has come into its own, appearing on CBC’s DNTO, playing showcases at NXNE, CMW, and Pop Montreal, touring, releasing an EP, and holding down a wildly successful residency in Toronto’s legendary Tranzac Club with guest performers including $100, Sandro Perri, Eric Chenaux, and Ohbijou’s Casey Mecija.
With the success of the live band, Lindeman turned her attention to live performance. But her recordings continued to grow and evolve. Through trial and error, Lindeman schooled herself in sound and composition, software and effects. Using a single microphone and playing most of the instruments herself, she painstakingly assembled the music which would form the critically acclaimed EP East, and finally grow into the full-length album The Line.
The Line is an album of surprising beauty. Lindeman’s crystalline voice floats over dense forests of banjo, cello, and percussion; folk songs of the utmost simplicity nestle next to urgent, multi-layered instrumentals. It is a meditation on grief that plays itself out not in the real world, but in the fevered imagination of the mind. The album delves deep into loss, regret, memory, anger, and love. In other words; all the things that nobody warns you about.
