Tamara Lindeman may have a clear-toned, country-tinged voice that’s liable to swoop, Joni Mitchell-like, from murmuring conversational tones into airy, soaring flight. She may comfortably share stages and album credits with indie-Americana troubadours like Daniel Romano, Andy Shauf and M. Ward. But the Canadian’s self-produced, self-titled fourth album as the Weather Station isn’t the waifish, mild-mannered shrinking-daisy singer/songwriter fare you might anticipate (and in which she has previously dabbled). These songs—even the quiet ones—are bold, messy, unflinching, humming with life. Lindeman’s lyrics, laid out on the page in full sentences, read more beautifully than song lyrics have any right to; each one a succinct, evocative, pithily observed short story. They are poetic but still readily relatable relationship anatomies, set in vivid, varied, natural and psycho-emotional landscapes. On record, her words translate effortlessly, almost miraculously, into songs that are by turns chatty, fluidly melodic and, in spots, deftly hooky—many of them buoyed by rich string arrangements (also by Lindeman) that bolster the songs’ emotional drama without ever nudging them into sentimentality.
—K. Ross Hoffman
