The Weather Station - Ignorance

 

Are you a Joni or a Kate man or woman? Or perhaps neither. You're hardly obliged to be. For me it becomes increasingly easy to park many new female solo albums pretty much in one camp or the other, Camp Joni or Camp Kate. There are albums of this kind which resist this very basic form of categorisation of course, but as a basic rule of thumb it is an argument and approach that does seem to hold some water. 

Tamara Lindeman or The Weather Station, if you prefer is definitely Camp Joni. it's not actually too far a leap to imagine this as a Joni album frankly given the ammount of  characteristics and concerns that both artists share. Both are also Canadians which I don't think is entirely incidental. That's not to say that Lindeman is apeing Mitchell. But their's is a shared approach and perspective.

The most obviously shared characteristic is restraint. Listening through the latest Weather Station album, Ignorance the first thing you need to say is that it's quite excellent, the second that it's holding something back. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. Many of the best records ever made share this quality.

Ignorance has an immediate folky, fluent grace. It skirts the borders of cool and the mainstream. There is one moment on  Parking Lot for example where the drifting into dream section of Fleetwood Mac's Sara is distinctly recalled. But elswewhere Lindeman is clearly more interested in crafting her masterpiece than churning out AOR hits.

Whether it is her masterpiece or not, I'll leave that for others to judge. It is certainly a massively accomplished record that I often find it easier to admire than love. But I have Pitchfork, Mojo, Uncut Magazine and the world and his wife telling me that this is an important record and I need to listen to it. I have listened to it and its clearly worthy of the attention its getting. I wish Lindeman would let her hair down a little bit more. But that's what I feel about Joni sometimes so perhaps I should be excluded from serious discussions such as these forthwith. Anyhow an album to hear. Oh look, I've done it myself.