The Weather Station

Canada has always proved to be fertile soil for troubadours. Toronto songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tamara Lendeman, known otherwise as The Weather Station, separates herself from her predecessors with a sound that draws heavy influence from English folk-song, but the searing emotional honesty of her lyrics surely puts her in the same spirit as those of her native land.

With regard to the British influence in her music, the serene, even pacing and spare arrangements in her songs bring to mind Bridget St. John, but as for the directness of her quietly courageous pipes and pen she is often more reminiscent of Richard Thompson. As much as we enjoy the bluegrass-influenced and psych-folk Americana type stuff that makes up most of the commercially successful folk music in vogue now, it is an excellent surprise to see an artist who has taken up the mantle of this other, more somber and spare style building up momentum and support! Her new album Loyalty was recorded in La Frette Studios, France, with some help from Canadian producer and musician Afie Jurvanen.

According to Lendeman, the name of her new album was the first thing that was certain about it from the beginning. The vignettes on this album seem to beg the question: what is the value of loyalty? As she notes on “Life’s Work,” supposedly loyal benefactors and supporters can appear to take in all that you offer to them one year, and then seemingly forget it all the next. And on “I Mined,” “Personal Eclipse,” and “Loyalty,” Lendeman reminds us that one can cheat oneself, out of a compulsion to be loyal to the myth of one’s “true self.”

The gently wistful, but self-possessed tone of Lendeman’s delivery and lyrics elevate the quality of her songwriting over so many of her contemporaries and establish her as more than just a revivalist. Her lyrics don’t devolve into mopefest territory but instead maintain a contemplative neutrality. The Weather Station is more than introspective balladry, it is the first flowering of an arresting new vision of which we have taken note. »

– Matthew Sweeney

The Weather Station plays live in Portland June 7 at The Alberta Rose Theater.