On
Loyalty and
The Weather Station,
Tamara Lindeman's music evolved by leaps and bounds. On
Ignorance, she reaches another peak. When
the Weather Station's tour for their 2017 self-titled album ended, she spent months researching the enormous impact of climate change. She attended demonstrations and hosted a series of discussions with other musicians and activists, but
Lindeman had to explore the issue -- and people's resistance to addressing it -- in her music. She's just as insightful singing about what she calls "climate grief" on
Ignorance as she is when describing the heartache between people. The breezy "Atlantic" nails the feeling of helplessness in the face of looming disaster: "I should get all this dying off my mind/I should really know better than to read the headlines." As she challenges complacency and fear,
Lindeman gets out of her own comfort zone with
Ignorance's music. Instead of the acoustic backdrops of her early releases or the rock flourishes of
The Weather Station, this time
Lindeman drapes her uncomfortable truths in downright luxurious sounds. Combining the silkiness of late-'70s/early-'80s
Roxy Music and
Fleetwood Mac with the exploratory spirit of jazz,
Ignorance's sophistication feels conspicuous but also precious, as though she's buffed her nuggets of truth to a mirrorlike sheen. Though she's previously shied away from theatricality, there's no denying how powerfully she uses it on the album's opening track, "Robber." Over slinky yet uneasy synths and strings,
Lindeman meditates on how the privileged steal resources in a croon embodying the seductiveness of the status quo. The silvery highs of
Lindeman's voice still resemble
Joni Mitchell, as do the cleverly captured details of
Ignorance's lyrics. There's even a song called "Parking Lot" that shares the exuberant poignancy of
Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," though
Lindeman sets her contemplation of the world around her ("You know it just kills me when I see some bird fly/It just kills me/And I don't know why") to perky disco strings. She brilliantly uses pop's familiar structures and steady tempos to underscore the album's feeling of disconnection, whether she emphasizes the loneliness on "Loss" with mantra-like repetition or magnifies the tiny cuts on "Separated" into chasms with crisp verses and choruses.
Lindeman's words and music may dazzle, but she's always compassionate as she examines the warning signs in a relationship with a person or a planet. On the tender, percolating standout "Heart," she sings, "I am soft/But I am also angry," which could be
Ignorance's mission statement. Her matter-of-fact delivery only enhances the complexity of romantic postmortems like "Subdivisions," which closes the album with a weary, late-winter glow and plenty of ambivalence. Musically and emotionally, there's so much going on that it's sometimes hard to keep up, but
Ignorance is a major statement that never feels oversimplified. While she's growing so much with each album that it seems risky to call this
Lindeman's best, it's safe to say this is another outstanding achievement from
the Weather Station. ~ Heather Phares
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