The Weather Station's Toronto residency: an emotional musical journey

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 Great Hall viewed from the back balcony. Top: September 2013. Bottom: December 2023.

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.

Music for the apocalypse: the albums of 2021

I was thinking recently about the albums that have touched my life over the past year and I realized that 2021 has been an incredibly strong year for new music. I count a whopping four different albums this year that, had they been released in 2020, would have been my favorite album of that year. It's been a long time since there was a year with so many albums that I loved so much. I think the pandemic that had many of us staying home for much of 2020 and that put live music on hold for more than a year is a big reason why so much great new music came into the world. With no touring, many musicians seem to have focused extra hard on honing their craft at home and in the studio. And the distressing reality of the modern world - with not only a still raging global pandemic, but also an ever worsening climate catastrophe, and the growing threat of American democracy collapsing - has certainly provided plenty of inspiration for great music. I don't know if it's appropriate to say this is a "good thing" that came from the awful pandemic era, but I'm definitely grateful for all that music.

This isn't an attempt to make a "best albums" list for 2021, because there are lots of undoubtedly great albums that I didn't get around to listening to. Rather, it's just a list of my personal favorite albums of the year. I'll give a little blurb for each of those four albums that stood out the most to me, counting down to my most favorite. Also, honorable mentions to Lucy Dacus's Home Video (incredible songwriting and so evocative of high school nostalgia) and Olivia Rodrigo's SOUR (if I had to name a favorite song of the year, the ridiculously infectious "good 4 u" would be a contender).

And now my favorite albums of 2021.

Weakened Friends - Quitter

This is a late addition, coming out just last month, but it quickly zoomed up my list. I realized recently that Quitter brings to mind for me Piebald's 2002 classic We Are the Only Friends We Have, which coming from me is incredibly high praise. I'm not saying the two bands sound alike, just that both albums are packed from front to back with incredibly fun to listen to emotional rock songs full of crunchy guitars, catchy hooks, and memorable lyrics, and the high quality of the songs is so consistent that I'd be hard pressed to name a weak track. Also that both albums feature noticeably higher production values over their respective bands' also excellent previous albums. And hey, both albums also feature horn parts on the closing tracks!

As usual with Weakened Friends, a trio from Portland, Maine, there's great musicianship all around, but Sonia Sturino's distinctive vocals are what really set them apart from the crowd. I think she speaks for most of us with the caustic way she spits out lines like "World's a fucking mess, spin me round, I feel nauseous now" on "Tunnels."

Essential tracks: "Everything is Better," "Tunnels," "Spew," "Haunted House"

(Note for other Weakened Friends fans: I also got really into Sturino's old band The Box Tiger this year and I highly recommend them as well; a distinctly different sound but arguably just as great or close to it.)

Typhoon - Sympathetic Magic

We cross the country to the other Portland (Oregon) for the next entry on my list. The release of the digital version of Sympathetic Magic in January came totally by surprise and it was a wonderful surprise at a time I really needed it. Typhoon's music has touched me personally in a way that very few artists have. After grappling with mortality in such a beautiful way on 2013's White Lighter, a contender for my favorite album of all time, Kyle Morton began to move toward themes more inspired by events of the modern world in certain tracks on 2018's Offerings and has moved further in that direction on the band's latest brilliant release. The band's orchestral indie folk rock sound is somewhat understated here compared to previous releases, fitting for the subject matter.

Second track "Empire Builder," a narrative centered around a cross country train ride, begins with the lines, "The apocalypse is incoming, only moving slow and unevenly" and that really does capture this moment in time. I do also really like the not-totally-giving-up-on-hope closing lines: "Everybody's angry/Everybody's lonely/Maybe it's hopeless/And maybe love is not enough/But let's not rule out the possibility." And some of the lyrics from subsequent track "Motion and Thought" are so evocative to me of the strange feeling of the early pandemic days: "Told you you could call me/Anytime you want/It's not as if I've got anything going on."

Essential tracks: "Empire Builder," "Motion and Thought, "We're In It," "Welcome to the Endgame"

Julien Baker - Little Oblivions

This album continues an incredible run for the amazingly accomplished young artist whose debut Sprained Ankle would be a career highlight for many musicians, but who proceeded to take her music to another level with Turn Out the Lights and has now pushed even farther with the stunning Little Oblivions. Baker toured with a full band backing her for the first time this year, and the bigger sound is evident on the album, and it works really, really well. Listening to her first album, you might not have guessed she would make music that rocks this hard, but clearly you'd have been wrong. Baker's astonishing voice still stands out above the great textures of guitar and synth sounds.

Baker's music has always been extremely personal, her struggles with mental health so beautifully testified to in her lyrics, and it's something I think more and more of us can relate to as the world seems to come apart around us. On closing track "Ziptie," she asks, "Good God, when're you gonna call it off, climb down off the cross, and change your mind?" It's a timely question! I also have to mention that any time Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, the three members of boygenius, come together on a song, it's one that you aren't going to want to miss. Apparently, vocals for "Favor" from Little Oblivions were recorded on the same day as those for "Please Stay" on Dacus's Home Video and for "Graceland Too" on Bridgers's 2020 album Punisher, and all three tracks are among the most gorgeous you'll hear in a while.

Essential tracks: "Faith Healer," "Ringside," "Favor," "Ziptie"

The Weather Station - Ignorance

I've already written at great length about my love for this album, which has truly become one of my all time favorites. It's a staggering achievement by the Canadian band (a project of singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman) who had previously released a string of very good albums but nothing that came close to, or would have led one to anticipate, the masterpiece that is Ignorance. The propulsive, jazzy rock sound is a surprising change from the folk leanings of the band's previous releases, and it works wonderfully. Lindeman has always had a knack for piercingly insightful lyrics but she takes her lyrics game to the next level on these ten tracks pondering a human being's place in a world beset by catastrophe.

This album is, to me, a distillate of the experience of being human in 2021. The anxiety and the grief and still the wonder of it all. Marveling at the beauty of the natural world ("My god, what a sunset; blood red floods the Atlantic") while unable to escape "all this dying" in the headlines. Taking a moment to watch a bird in a parking lot. Remembering that "everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky." "Always reeling, through long midnights of feeling" but at the same time being unable to conceal love, love for this troubled world and for other people inhabiting it with us. Years from now, I'll look back on this year, and this album will be the soundtrack of my memories.

Essential tracks: "Atlantic," "Parking Lot," "Heart," "Subdivisions"

And in conclusion, thank you, musicians, for making this sucky time suck a little less. It's hard to imagine life without you.

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.