It's strange happenstance that the latest Weather Station album should come out during a week that I've been undergoing a wonderful Joni Mitchell immersion on the Facebook listening group Temporary Fandoms and finally fully beginning to realise why she's esteemed quite so highly by so many.
Weather Station's Tamara Lindemann, (who fronts and steers the band), has much in common with Joni. They're both Canadian, both women obviously, both whisper to the world rather than scream at it, and both have a solemn but committed and engaged approach to the state of play in the world, relationships and how we stand in relation to the wonderful but also woeful planet that we share.
How Is It that I Should Look At The Stars appears almost exactly a year after Ignorance, Lindemann's record from 2021, which was rightly almost universally acclaimed. Apparently it was recorded during the same sessions. It's another stately, almost state of the art, state of play in the world album, that complements and contrasts from Ignorance and has already been praised to the heavens and given a 10 out of 10 score by Uncut Magazine, who generally understand these things. on first listen, I can quite see why.
How Is It finds Lindemann at her most restrained and insightful. The still point of the turning world. At a moment that, given Russia's full out invasion of The Ukraine, and a time that many of us are beginning to wonder whether this is the beginning of World War Three and the beginning of the end of everything we know and cherish about life.
It's a record that I immediately warm to in a similar way to how I've finally warmed to and appreciate Joni's gifts over the course of this week. It's another marvel to be wondered at and embraced. A light in the ever encroaching darkness.
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