When Erin and I walked into the Great Hall concert venue in Toronto on Monday, December 11 for the first night of a three night residency by Canadian indie folk/rock outfit the Weather Station, I was immediately struck by the familiarity of the room. But I didn't quite believe it at first - how had I not recognized the name of the venue when the concert was announced and when I bought tickets? Sitting in the balcony, the familiarity sunk in more and more and a quick Google search during intermission confirmed that just over ten years ago, in September 2013, I had attended one of the most memorable and powerful shows of my life, Ohbijou's farewell concert, at this same venue.
The juxtaposition of events in my life that had been recent the first time I'd been at the Great Hall and recent events in my life now upon my second visit was utterly staggering. This juxtaposition added considerable emotional weight to what would already have been an emotional three nights of music. That's not what this post is about, though, so I won't go into it here, but as any post on my blog is in part a record of a moment in my life, I'd be remiss not to mention it.
Oddly enough, I see (from my last.fm history) that September 2013 was also when I first started listening to the music of Tamara Lindeman, aka the Weather Station. I was really only a casual fan, though, all the way up until 2021 when her brilliant album Ignorance took hold of me in a way few albums have. Since then, I've gained additional appreciation for her whole body of work, and when she announced earlier this year a three night Great Hall residency playing two different albums each night to chronicle her whole career to this point, I decided it was an event I didn't want to miss.
I'd never before seen an artist do anything like this. In being a whole career retrospective, the concept bears some similarity to the hot music event of this year, Taylor Swift's Eras tour (which Lindeman referenced at one point, saying that her and her band's costume changes were far less elaborate). Here, though, the Weather Station residency was a three night event, and each album was played in full (in contrast to Swift's epic one night shows containing selections from each album). I thought it sounded like such a cool idea, and it definitely lived up to my expectations! Seeing the evolution of Lindeman's work from sparse folk to richly orchestrated art-rock was a fantastic experience, and hearing her narrate this journey made the experience all the more compelling.
Night one featured 2011 album All of It Was Mine and 2014 EP What Am I Going to Do with Everything I Know. (2009 Weather Station album The Line was not included and if I recall correctly Lindeman described All of It Was Mine as her debut album so I guess she must not consider The Line as essential to her career, but it's a really good listen too.) Although the three nights collectively covered her career in order, it was only night two's albums that were played in the order they were released. On each of the three nights it seemed the larger of the two releases got headline status; thus, on night one the EP was the first set and the earlier LP was played second.
Both All of It Was Mine and What Am I Going to Do... are made up of really pretty, sparsely instrumented folk music, Lindeman's distinctive voice and introspective, evocative lyrics complemented well by delicate acoustic guitar and banjo parts with occasional flourishes from other folk instruments and well-timed vocal harmonies. The intimate small venue setting with a crowd who were all there to enthusiastically listen to and appreciate the performance (no chatty concert crowd here, thank goodness!) was perfect for this gorgeous music. During the first set, Lindeman said that the six songs of the EP weren't enough for a full set and so she and her band included several unreleased songs from the same era, a welcome addition.
Unlike most shows I've seen where a band plays all the songs from an album, here the setlists did not follow the album tracklists. Often the tracks that might most be considered standouts were placed near the ends of sets. On All of It Was Mine, what I and I'd guess many other listeners would consider the most outstanding track is stunning album opener "Everything I Saw," which was pushed back in the setlist - but only by one song, to second. So when Lindeman stumbled over the banjo part and had to stop shortly into the song, she said it was a mistake to have put it so early! None of her albums since have had her playing such an intricate banjo part, so she'd been out of practice. She mentioned having considered the possibility of slowing the song down but that that wouldn't have felt right. After starting over, she played wonderfully, to the delight of the audience. It was a great, human moment that you can only get in a live concert setting.
I really loved every moment when Lindeman spoke about her songs, her feelings about her songs, the process behind the making of the songs, her life as it related to the songs, etc. Getting to hear these insights from a musician about their music that I love is always such a treat. During the All of It Was Mine set she mentioned that she considers "Traveller" one of the best songs she's written and I flashed back to seeing her live in 2021 and how emotional the performance of that song was. The lyrics paint an astoundingly good and heartrending picture of the moments in time in the aftermath of a loved one's death.
After the two sets comprising the songs from the two featured albums, each night also featured an encore. Night one's was highlighted by a rousing cover of recently deceased (at a tragically young age) Canadian folk artist Richard Laviolette's "Snuck Right Up."
Night two brought performances of 2015's Loyalty and 2017's The Weather Station. Loyalty was described by Lindeman as a transitional album, which can be seen in both the lyrics and the music, still mostly delicate folk music but starting to get bigger in sound compared to the previous night's albums. It was really interesting to me to hear her talk about how she looked back at the songs she'd written in the past and how she'd had a tendency to not express things as clearly or directly as she might later in her career. This is apparent to me, looking back over her albums - her lyrics have always been so thoughtful and so beautiful, but the lyrics of her most recent albums often have this wonderfully piercing quality where in the past the meanings of her words were often more obscured.
Before playing "Tapes," Lindeman explained that the song was about her finding and listening to tapes that someone close to her had made of himself singing while walking around the city, after he had passed away. And after hearing this explanation, the simple lyrics of the song, lyrics I'd not fully comprehended before, were just so powerful, and Lindeman's vocals as she "sang 'Oh'" were absolutely haunting. I got chills.
The self-titled album that was the second to be performed on the second night is one of those albums where if you've listened to an artist's previous catalog and then you get to that album you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? The Weather Station's sound suddenly transforms from delicate, folksy singer-songwriter type stuff (albeit with more complexity than that phrasing implies) to big, full band alt-country stylings and some of the songs actually rock in a way that was barely hinted at on the previous three records. "Thirty" in particular is such a great song and it was fittingly saved for last before the encore, moved back from its also very fitting track two position on the recorded album.
Another highlight of the set was Lindeman's musings about the song "Power" - how she'd looked back at her old lyrics and felt she mostly still agreed with things she'd said in the past but on this song she'd felt repulsed by her expressing a desire for power. Because wanting power over other people is a fucked up thing, she said. But then she'd thought about it more in the context of the full lyrics and had realized that when she'd said she wanted power, what she had really been hoping for was to simply have respect. (Like Aretha Franklin, she said!) And thus she was able to make peace with herself about her old song.
At times, it felt like the performance was a kind of therapy session for Lindeman - and I mean this in the absolute best way! It was a joy to watch and listen to her work her way through all those years of her life via her music.
Night three was the night I'd been most anticipating, featuring 2021's Ignorance, one of my favorite albums of all time, and 2022's How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, something of a companion album to Ignorance. What I said about the self-titled being an album that makes you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? That applies doubly to Ignorance, an album that I never would have imagined Lindeman making based on her previous body of work. It's recognizably a Weather Station album with Lindeman's voice and lyrics and strong sense of melody, but the lush orchestration and complex, jazzy arrangements and the intense, propulsive (two drummers for this live performance!) rock sound are so unlike any of her previous records. And it all works so well.
How Is It... then took things in yet another totally new direction sonically as an album of piano ballads, thematically related to the songs on Ignorance and written at the same time but very different in sound. And stunning in its own way, more than I would have imagined an album of piano ballads could be. The songs took more time to grow on me than those of Ignorance but grow on me they did, with a couple that I'd consider among Lindeman's finest work. This beautifully understated set of songs made up the first part of night three's show and the intimate setting was perfect for experiencing the first ever live performance of most of them.
I do vividly remember seeing my favorite song from the album, "Stars," from which the album's title comes, performed live in 2021. At the time, I'd never heard the song before. I was instantly captivated by it and hoped fervently that it would be released on an album in the future. During the performance of the song at the Great Hall, Lindeman had to stop partway through to drink some water (all the singing and talking had done a number on her voice, apparently). She took the opportunity to tell the story of the song, of how when she was a child, her mother always took her out to see the Perseids meteor shower every August, and how she'd been so awed by the beauty, but now it was hard for her to appreciate that beauty because it made her think of all the beauty on our unique and wonderful planet and the devastation the human race is wreaking upon it.
"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" is, to me, just such a beautiful expression of this sentiment.
It was fitting, Lindeman said, that the night of the show was the night of the Geminids meteor shower. As someone who has loved watching meteor showers since childhood, I especially enjoyed hearing this backstory. The song plus Lindeman's narration of it did get the tear ducts going a bit, I have to say.
Unlike the five previous sets, the performance of the songs from Ignorance went straight through with no narration from Lindeman, just a high energy rock set of great song after great song. I got the sense that the albums that were further back in time gave Lindeman more to talk about because she was revisiting her past in rehearsing and playing them, whereas this was not so much the case with Ignorance.
Lindeman's band (with some repeat and some different members across the various albums) was great throughout the residency but especially got to strut their stuff on this last set. A sax solo on one song brought the crowd to raucous applause.
I've already written a lot about Ignorance on my blog so suffice to say, the live performance easily lived up to my high expectations. A rousing encore rendition of "Better Now" from Ignorance's deluxe version (amusingly introduced by Lindeman as hopefully the last song she'll write about writing songs, something she's done a lot but that she does really well so I don't mind!) was a fitting conclusion to the three nights of music.
At the end of the performance, Lindeman remarked that after playing through those 60+ songs over the course of three nights, she felt in a way complete. It was a really touching statement. A reminder of the powerful way that music accompanies us on the journey of life. Lindeman was grateful we the audience had joined her on that journey. I'm grateful she gave us the opportunity, and I'd love it if other favorite artists of mine would do similar career-spanning performances. It really was a magical experience.
