The Weather Station’s seventh studio album, Humanhood, is prickly and less accessible than the Canadian band’s previous work, reflecting their determination to innovate. The group’s folk leanings still crop up in their Joni Mitchell-esque melodies, but the sound feels more fleshed out and the production is more layered.
Frontwoman Tamara Lindeman sings more forcefully now, and drummer Kieran Adams achieves a rhythmic complexity by integrating live and programmed beats. Sudden change is a constant throughout the album: “Neon Signs” concludes with an atonal flutter of piano and clarinet, while “Mirror” ends with a glistening shimmer of keyboards.
Humanhood captures the feeling of looking at oneself through a distorted mirror, trying to bring mind and body into unison. “Neon Signs” deftly diagrams a network of transactional relationships, where “you had to make yourself wanted, to get what you wanted.”
Lindeman’s lyrics repeatedly return to the theme of yearning for the tangibility of the physical world. “Maybe I can get back to my body,” she sings on the title track. “Body Moves” hedges its bets, anxiously describing a state of confusion in which “your body fooled you.”
These feelings and fears are cleverly placed in the context of environmental decline on “Irreversible Damage,” with a clarinet crying out like a human voice. While rarely referring directly to climate change, Humanhood gives us permission to feel frazzled amid an increasingly volatile environment. Following “Irreversible Damage,” the album grows decidedly quieter, like an extended fadeout, finding calm after so much confusion.
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The post The Weather Station ‘Humanhood’ Review: The Calm Before the Storm appeared first on Slant Magazine.