Toronto’s The Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman) makes its Carleton debut on Friday, December 8th with a special early-night show at 7 PM. Tickets are $15 advanced or $20 at the door. We don’t often come across an artist that immediately evokes Joni Mitchell but Tamara is worthy of that comparison. You do not want to miss this one, folks. Toronto’s Bernice opens the show.
The Weather Station is the fourth—and most forthright—album by The Weather Station, the project of Toronto songwriter Tamara Lindeman. Her most fully realized statement to date, it is a work of profound urgency, artistic generosity, and joy. Self-titled and self-produced, the album unearths a vital new energy
from Lindeman’s acclaimed songwriting practice, marrying it to a bold new sense of confidence.
“I wanted to make a rock and roll record,” Lindeman explains,“but one that sounded how I wanted it to sound, which of course is nothing like rock and roll.” The result is a spirited, frequently topical tour de force that declares its understated feminist politics, and its ambitious new sonic directions, from its first moments.
On past records, Lindeman has been a master of economy. Here her precisely detailed prose-poem narratives remain as exquisitely wrought as ever, but they inhabit an idiosyncratic, sometimes disorderly, and often daring album that feels, and reads, like a collection of obliquely gut-punching short stories. Her previous album Loyalty was recorded at La Frette Studios in France in the winter of 2014 with Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and Robbie Lackritz (Feist). Nominated for the 2015 Polaris Music Prize, it earned praise from The Guardian, Pitchfork, NPR Music, Uncut, and MOJO, among many others, who celebrated its delicate, carefully worded verse, filled with double meanings, ambiguities, complex metaphors, and rich details of the everyday.
Lindeman and her band have toured extensively in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, both as a headliner and as support for artists such as The War on Drugs, The Mountain Goats, Damien Jurado, Bahamas, and Basia Bulat.
“Timeless… Measured, perceptive storytelling. A singer with an unmistakable & communicative voice, able to convey hope & hurt with equal clarity.” Pitchfork
“She writes literate songs with unusual precision & sings them in an understated, open-hearted way that lends good poetry the directness of conversation.”
Uncut
“Bob Dylan aside, the singer-songwriter I’ve listened to most over the past year, & to whom I expect to be paying attention for many more to come, is Tamara Lindeman, who, under the name the Weather Station, performs songs notable for a conversational fluency, a diarist’s powers of observation, & a quiet refusal of emotional simplicities.” Richard Williams – The Guardian
Bernice, the project of Toronto-based vocalist/songwriter Robin Dann, blends “melodies reminiscent of artists like Sade with the playful sounds of artists like Deerhoof and Dirty Projectors” (Pigeons & Planes). Dann is a trained vocalist with a Masters in Music from Goldsmiths University of London, and her band – Thom Gill (keyboards/samples), Felicity Williams (vocals), Phil Melanson (percussion), and Dan Fortin (bass) – features members of Bahamas, Owen Pallett, and DIANA.
Following the release of two singles – “St Lucia” and “Don’t Want To Be European” – Bernice released Puff, a 5-song EP (with exclusive vinyl release on Vinyl Me Please), on June 16, 2017 to resounding critical acclaim from Pitchfork, NPR, Stereogum, The Fader, and Zane Lowe. Puff was produced by Grammy Award-winner Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Lucius) and Matt Smith (Owen Pallett).