This is what the songs are for

I'm just going to gush about one of my current favorite musicians here for a bit. Is that okay? Because I would really like to do that.

I've been thinking about writing more about this artist for a while. After being extraordinarily blessed to have gotten to see them live the other day, I went from "thinking about" to "feeling compelled toward." More on that show in a bit, but first...

The album

It's a very exciting thing to me when I have the realization, after listening more and more to a newly obtained album that I really like, that said album is in fact becoming one of my favorites of all time. This has happened this year with Ignorance by The Weather Station.

It seems that every eight years now, an album enters my life that has lyrics that just really speak to my soul in a profound way. This is something I realized recently. It's one of those weird things that I notice because I have a weirdly heightened tendency to notice patterns. I'm really weird. Whatever, I enjoy it. Anyway, I was thinking about it, after thinking about how much I love the lyrics of Ignorance and pondering what other albums had lyrics that I had loved that much, and there are two other albums that were on that level.

In 2005 (not this album's release year, but the year I started listening), it was Ozma's Rock and Roll Part Three. Its lyrics spoke to me because I was a really shy, nerdy young adult who was into things like video games, Star Wars (there's a song about having a crush on Natalie Portman!) and punny wordplay ("an apple pie, the number pi, I studied you in math class" from the song "Apple Trees"? Classic!). Also, the lyrics lean heavily on nostalgia, something that speaks to me even more today, even as I've to some extent outgrown certain other aspects.

In 2013, eight years later, the album was Typhoon's White Lighter. Its lyrics, heavily influenced by the lead singer's near-death experience from Lyme disease and consequent pondering of mortality, spoke to me because I got into the band shortly after my wife was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. The album was in fact released the same week she was admitted to the hospital.

In 2021, another eight years on, it's Ignorance. (What will be the album of 2029, I wonder?) And as for why this album's lyrics speak to me so much? I'd say they speak to me because, well, I'm a human being living in this strange and distressing era of history.

There are reasons why the lyrics speak to me personally more than they might to the average person, but in comparison to the other two albums I cited, I think the appeal and the relatability are broader, because it's not about a specific aspect of my life, it's about human (and non-human!) life in general. Given that, I've decided that if I had to pick one album that I would subjectively assess as having "the best lyrics" of any album I know, this is the one.

The music is great too. Tamara Lindeman has really evolved the sound of her music from the folk stylings of her early records, which were quite good too, but this is even better. The jazzy indie rock on Ignorance has this consistently propulsive feel from the rhythm section and piano that just lends this sense of urgency that goes so well with the subject matter of the lyrics. And Lindeman has a wonderfully expressive voice. It all comes together in a great package, but to me the lyrics are just next level so I want to talk about why I love the lyrics so much.

I'm going to go through the songs of the album in order and pick out a favorite line or two and explain why they're favorites. I hope this post can properly convey the brilliance contained on this album. I think these lyrics are by far best experienced reading along with the liner notes while listening to the album front to back. But I want to talk about it, so, here goes.

1. Robber

"You never believed in the robber.  You thought a robber must hate you to wanna take from you.  The robber don’t hate you, you never believed in the robber but the robber never believed in you."

Okay, this song is about how the heartless capitalistic system we live in robs us all of so much (uh oh, we're getting political here!). And I think this bit expresses so nicely and succinctly how people don't even think about how so much harm is done by just a system, a mindless thing, that has no intent, good or bad, it's just the way things are. It doesn't have to be the way things are. But most people don't question it.

2. Atlantic

"My god, I thought, my god, what a sunset; blood red floods the Atlantic. With a wine in my hand, laid back in the grass of some stranger’s field, while shearwaters reeled overhead, thinking; I should get all this dying off my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really, can I not just cover my eyes?"

Just incredibly evocative imagery, which Lindeman excels at, to open this song. And then the lines about all the dying in the headlines that the first time I heard I just thought, wow, this pretty much sums up how it feels to be in the world right now. (The album was released in early February of this year, when COVID deaths in the US and many other countries had just recently reached their very peak. Not that this song is specifically about COVID - I would read it as more about the ongoing and worsening climate catastrophes that heavily inform Lindeman's songwriting.)

3. Tried to Tell You

"But some days there might be nothing you encounter, to stand behind the fragile idea that anything matters."

Don't we all feel this way sometimes? The idea that "anything matters" can be a fragile idea, but it's important to remind ourselves of the things we encounter that do reinforce this idea. Also, this is the song from which the line "This is what the songs are for" that I used to title this post came from, and for me, great songs, such as those on this album, are some of the most important things to help me feel there are things that matter.

4. Parking Lot

"Waiting outside the club in a parking lot, I watched some bird fly up and land on the rooftop, then up again into the sky, in and out of sight, flying down again to land on the pavement.  It felt intimate to watch it; its small chest rising and falling, as it sang the same song, over and over again, over the traffic and the noise.  Is it alright if I don’t wanna sing tonight?  I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes.  But are there not good reasons to cry?"

The image of the bird, and the description of how it feels intimate to watch it - so, so good. And then the connection from the bird to how the observer - the human singer - is feeling. I'm honestly envious of Lindeman's way with words. Also from this song:

"But everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky."

Something about this line blows me away in a way that's hard to articulate. But it just really makes me think about our place in the world.

Okay, and I have to mention one other line from this truly incredible song:

"I confess I don’t wanna undress this feeling, I am not poet enough to express this peeling."

I disagree with this statement. I would contend that Tamara Lindeman absolutely is "poet enough."

5. Loss

"You lay in bed, the sun streamed through the blinds.  Sweat soaked through your shirt.  You lay a hand across your eyes, every other part of you hurt.  From inside the confines of the story that everything would be alright, it was only so wide you could open your eyes, you could only let in so much light.  But you knew the story had never been true - loss is loss, is loss, is loss."

I think anyone who has experienced great personal loss can relate to the idea of the "story that everything would be alright" - the story that "had never been true." And again, the imagery here stuns me.

6. Separated

A few months ago, I wrote a whole post that was largely inspired by lyrics from this song. Here's another good excerpt:

"You try again your arguments out on me, I try and tell you again; but if you wanted to understand me you could, if you wanted to hold my hand you would, but you don’t want to, you’ve committed to this wall we sleep against."

I think this is such a great description of two people in a relationship that is no longer working.

7. Wear the World

"It does not matter to the world if I embody it.  It could not matter less that I wanted to be a part of it."

A very poetically stated reflection on our ultimate significance, or lack thereof.

8. Trust

"In the throes of this divorce, in this court proceedings; for some reason my mind was filled with all my softest feelings."

To me this is about how when a relationship has stopped working and it's ending or ended, at times you can still have very sentimental feelings about that person and the relationship, which I'm sure is a familiar concept but one that people often don't seem to talk about.

9. Heart

Okay, I love the lyrics of this song so much (I'd say this and "Parking Lot" are my top favorites of the album), I'm going to go through them all.

"I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, when I know it is the best of me.  If I should offend you, I will show myself out, you can bury me in doubt if you need to."

Being in love, and not knowing if the other person feels the same way, and not being able to keep it inside any longer. Or it can also work if this is about, rather than love for another person, love for the world - being passionate about important things, and the way some people recoil at this passion. I think it works on both levels.

"I can walk out in the street, no-one need look at me, it is with my eyes I see.  I guess that I am soft, but I am also angry, but I will feel all my loss, I will hold my heart inside me."

The idea of being soft but also angry is so striking and so relevant at this moment in time. I also like the "loss" callback.

"My dumb eyes turn toward beauty; turn towards sky, renewing.  My dumb touch is always reaching; for green for soft for yielding."

This, to me, hearkens back to earlier songs on the album like "Atlantic" and "Parking Lot." There's this deep appreciation for the beauty of the world we inhabit. And there's doubt over whether it's worth caring so much with all the ongoing tragedy. In a way I think this song brings all the themes of the album together. I guess you could say it's the "Heart" of the album. Heh. (Still like corny wordplay!) Sorry, moving on...

"In the pale dim light, I am always reeling, through long midnights of feeling."

This is a staggeringly poignant and poetic description of an experience that is no doubt familiar to many.

 "Of all the many things that you may ask of me, don’t ask me for indifference, don’t come to me for distance."

An excellent statement of the importance of caring - which again, could be about a specific other person, or about the world as a whole.

"No, I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, if it is too hard to look at me, I will show myself out, walk out in the city.  You can bury me in doubt if you feel it necessary."

And returning to the opening lines, restated but slightly altered with a different final rhyme which I like because I guess it just sounds more interesting that way!

10. Subdivisions

"Got in the car, and the cold metallic scent of snow caught in my throat as I reached out to turn on the radio; the unfamiliar songs, the voices sing of love, and of wanting to dance and to sing in the rhythm of.  The road was overwhelmed with snow piled high in all the ditches, I drove as though I did not understand all the divisions, the yellow signs and the painted lines, and the order they envisioned was so clear.  I joined the steady line of cars on the highway, as though I was going home, but I drove the wrong way.  Past the looming walls of subdivisions, out past the strip malls, white fields and gray gas stations."

There is even more incredibly vivid imagery here. Again, I'm envious. And the divisions/subdivisions thing, without even really saying it, I think so much is being said here about the way that modern society has been structured and how it divides us and all the harm it causes. I'll spare you the rant about car culture that I could easily go on here.

And that's not even close to all that the song is about. It dips back to the personal relationship themes from earlier in the album: "I left you back at home because I simply could not do it, tell you I could be with you when I could see right through it; our whole life.  But what if I misjudged; in the wildest of emotion, I took this way too far?" (I enjoy the "took this way too far" double meaning here.) So the album is simultaneously about struggling with one's place in a relationship and struggling with one's place in a world that is being devastated by humanity's callous actions. And speaks beautifully on both themes.

So that's it. Check out Ignorance. I implore you!

Next up...

The show

I caught The Weather Station live at the Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan (a Detroit suburb) on Thursday, September 9. I made the drive up from Cleveland late in the afternoon, grabbed some dinner (takeout I'd ordered ahead of time), and headed over to the venue.

It struck me as I was waiting outside that it was really nice just to be doing this. To have driven to another city for the purpose of seeing a band I really love. That's something I do all the time, normally, because music is such a huge part of my life, but it had been almost two years since the last time I'd made such a trip.

It was not the first show I've attended this year (there were some others earlier this summer in Cleveland), but it was the first at which I had to show my vaccine card to get in. I'm very glad that venues have enacted this requirement. Additionally, at the request of the artist, attendees were required to be masked at all times except when actively eating or drinking. I support this as well, due to the current situation with the delta variant - in fact I recently bought a pack of KN95 masks specifically for wearing at shows - but going into it I thought it might feel a little weird to be wearing a mask at a show.

It turned out, which I had not thought much about ahead of time, that having a show with both vaccine and mask requirements for attendees seemed to select for an audience of people who all really wanted to be there to experience the music. The crowd wasn't huge, but it was one of the best audiences I've ever shared a concert experience with, because everyone had their full attention on what was happening on stage, and there was none of the annoying audience chatter that often irritates me at shows.

If requiring masks at shows leads to people in the audience not talking during the performances, then I say let's have masks at shows forever! (I mean, I don't think this will really happen, but if it actually does cut down on audience chatter I would genuinely be glad of the change.)

I didn't realize it ahead of time, but this was the first club show The Weather Station had played since before COVID, as well as the first time since before COVID that the Canadian band had crossed the border. I felt very lucky to be there for such an occasion.

It was truly a magical experience, something that I've missed so much in this last year and a half. The band played almost all the songs from Ignorance as well as a few older cuts, including standout track "Thirty" from 2017's self-titled album. The band's keyboard player was not present due to a border crossing snafu, so Lindeman took on extra keyboard duties while singing, which she handled well. All the band members' performances were on point - guitar, bass, drums, and nice clarinet and saxophone flourishes from the wind musician adding some great texture to the songs.

It was easy to tell that it was a really emotional occasion for everyone, the people on stage and the people in the audience. We've all missed this. Going a year with almost no person live music has made me realize that I really do think live music is a nigh essential part of the experience of being human. Sure, that's more true for me than for the average person, but I think it applies broadly.

After a great main set, Lindeman returned to the stage alone to begin the encore, sat at the keyboard, and played a beautiful song I'd never heard before but hope to hear again. It contained a lot of her usual evocative imagery as she described looking at the stars in the night sky as a child and then connected that to looking at the night sky as an adult and seeing fireworks on New Year's Eve as the year 2020 approached.

2020, man. Wow.

This was followed by a full band performance of "Subdivisions," a fitting closer. After the band left the stage a second time, the audience applauded enthusiastically, and some of us, me included, just kept clapping. I think we just really didn't want it to be over. In a way that is often true when you see a really excellent show, but now even more so than usual. I don't know whether Lindeman was anticipating doing a second encore, but she came out again, and treated us to a performance of "Traveler" from 2011 album All of It Was Mine. I've listened to that album many times, but I had never truly listened to the lyrics of that song in a way that their meaning sunk in the way all the lyrics of Ignorance have. And I found myself sitting there just stunned once more at the beautiful and emotional pictures Lindeman paints with her songs.

Most of the way through the song, though, at an instrumental part, she stopped playing and said one of the strings of her guitar was out of tune and she had to tune it. So then, while tuning, she kept talking to the audience, and kind of started rambling. And then laughed and said that before going out on tour again after all this time, she had thought about how she wanted to present herself on stage, and had decided she wanted to go out and just be serious and play the songs and not spend much time on banter. And here she was at the first show out on tour and already getting away from doing that.

I, for one, really enjoy hearing the interesting things musicians talk about on stage, so I welcomed this.

Eventually she said that the end of the song was sad and after getting sidetracked on amusing banter she couldn't get back into that place so she wasn't going to finish the song. Instead she'd play a different song that was more upbeat. She started playing the song, got about one line in, then stopped and confessed she had forgotten the words to the song and broke down laughing.

That was the end of the show! Lindeman said she owed us one and promised that they'd be back, thanked the audience again, and left the stage. It was a very unusual ending but I have no complaints at all. It was such a, well, human moment. A moment of that special connection that happens between a musician and their audience. When musicians get in a room with people who really love their music, magic happens, magic that can't truly be replicated in any other way. It happened throughout that evening at the Magic Bag.

There was just so much joy in that room! I had almost forgotten what it felt like.

There was another thing that Lindeman said during the show that really struck me, in a sad way. She said that it was good to be back in America. She noted that the news from here is "intense" (no kidding!), but whenever she actually comes here, it's really nice. It's a nice place, she said, "and it always will be."

The way she said "and it always will be"... it was one of those things where you say something and the words you use express certainty, but you don't actually feel certain, you actually are just hoping that it will be true.

These really are scary times. And as I drove home, I was thinking about how, when I was a kid, I was told all this stuff about the USA being the greatest country in the world, and a lot of it was BS, but I do think that back then, it was at least generally the case that this country was admired by people in other countries. Nowadays, people in other countries feel bad for us. And for very good reasons! I've been aware of this before, but Lindeman's words really drove it home for me. And it did make me feel sad.

To quote a favorite tweet from Julien Baker (who I'm very much looking forward to seeing live in a couple weeks), though, "at least there's music am i right." The Weather Station's show on Thursday was the best reminder of that that I've had since my trip to California to see Ozma in December 2019. And it was all the more poignant now, in a way I never could have imagined back then. This truly is "what the songs are for."

That wraps up what I have to say about The Weather Station, but I also have some thoughts about...

Going to concerts during COVID

This was not the first show I've been to this year, but it was the first show I've been to since the delta surge in the US got bad (although it's currently not that bad in Michigan, at least). There was a part of me, and I know this stems to some part just from me being a generally anxious person, that was worrying, am I doing something wrong by going to a concert now?

I know that, rationally, when you look at the way most people are living their lives at this stage of the pandemic (see, for example, crowded indoor restaurants at which people are talking and eating and obviously not wearing masks while doing so), the relative added risk of COVID spread from a concert at which both vaccines and masks are required is tiny. (Especially a concert that was not crowded, as was the case here.) I know that musicians and venues have been put in a horrible place by this pandemic, and additional economic assistance from the government is not coming, and I think that if these events can happen in a way that does a good job minimizing risk, it's a good thing to support those musicians and venues. I also think that having events with vaccine requirements will likely help increase vaccination rates, even if by a small amount, in a way that not having events at all, or having events without vaccine requirements, would not do, and therefore could very well be a net positive in the fight to end the pandemic.

Still, it was hard to shake the feeling, what if it was wrong to do this? I've seen some people on Twitter say things like, "There shouldn't be concerts right now!" Which gets to my anxious brain.

It got me thinking about how people have talked about COVID risk in general, and I realized even more something that I had already been realizing. I think that the way a lot of liberals (myself included, when I think back to earlier in the pandemic), have talked about COVID risk has been very sanctimonious, and has come across (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not), as basically trying to paint people as morally wrong for simply having normal human wants and needs.

I realized how essential a part of life live music is to me. And I'm sure to a lot of other people. Now, I'm fairly introverted, and although I definitely missed getting to spend time with my family, to be honest I could just as well do without social gatherings of more than, say, five or six people. (With the exception of concerts! Which are a different sort of social gathering, I suppose.) So other than the lack of concerts, the restrictions on gatherings of large groups of people weren't so much a problem for me. But I'm sure there are other people who find going to parties just as essential a part of life as I find going to concerts.

Now, look, I totally do think that the restrictions on indoor gatherings were well justified prior to vaccines being widely available. (Now, I think vaccine requirements are a better option.) But I also think it's pretty messed up that people have been shamed so much for just wanting to do things that humans, as social animals, have a natural want and need to do.

I remember seeing someone tweet something that was like, "If people had just done the little things like get vaccinated, wear a mask, and social distance, we wouldn't be in this mess." (I think an emerging theme here is that I spend too much time on Twitter...)

And yeah, getting vaccinated, that absolutely should be a little thing for the vast, vast majority of eligible people. It's a huge problem that a lot of those people aren't getting vaccinated, which is a topic for another post. Wearing masks? Yeah, not that big a thing generally speaking. But at the same time, it's pretty privileged for someone who is working from home and only has to wear a mask at the grocery store to say that about people who are toiling in hot kitchens all day.

But social distancing? Calling social distancing a "little thing" when this has been going on for a year and a half, to me, just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or denial of human nature.

(I'm sure the counterargument would be that if everyone had just done what they were supposed to, it would have all ended a long time ago, but when you look at what has happened in numerous other countries around the world, I just don't think it's realistic that that could have ever happened in the US. Especially with the emergence of the delta variant. Yes, things did not have to be nearly as bad as they have been, but it wasn't going to just go away in any realistic scenario.)

Now, I find it very understandable why people have talked about COVID risk in this way. It's been a horrible time that has been hard on everyone in different ways. I'm not trying to shame people for shaming people, which would be hypocritical. I just don't think it's been productive.

I wonder how much difference it could have made if the moralizing about COVID could have been avoided and instead there had just been a focus on giving accurate information on what the risks were and what were the best ways to mitigate those risks. Of course, the bigger problem all along was all the misinformation and politicization of the pandemic coming from those on the right politically, but I think those of us on the left could have done a lot better too.

Ultimately, I think all the moralizing likely led people to react in one of three general ways. First, there are those people who were never going to take this seriously. Nothing could have ever reached them, but I think the moralizing might have made them even more eager to flout restrictions, "to trigger the libs."

Then there are the people who did want to take it seriously, but I think those people fall on a spectrum of risk tolerance. Many of those who fall more toward the "want to live as close to normal life as possible while mitigating risks" side would be likely to eventually get annoyed by the moralizing and then start tuning out all the rules and restrictions. Those who fall more toward the "want to avoid risk as much as possible" side have probably gotten complexes where we now experience unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety about doing even low risk activities. And none of this is helpful to the overall health of individual people or of society.

That was pretty rambling, but I think there's a point in there somewhere.

Anyway, major kudos to artists and venues for requiring vaccines and masks for concerts (although I still think we need more attention to ventilation and filtration of indoor air!). Please, let's all make sure everyone around us is getting vaccinated so we can all go back to enjoying in person live music and all the other things that are essential for us to fully live our lives as the social animals we are.