The Weather Station Are Worth the Wait at Music Hall of Williamsburg
April 27, 2022
The Weather Station – Music Hall of Williamsburg – April 26, 2022
In New York City, good live music is largely a guarantee. Even so, some shows still feel like striking gold. That was certainly the case on Tuesday night, when Tamara Lindeman and her band, playing as the Weather Station, delivered an exquisite, exuberant and precious set that I will be treasuring for months. Toronto-based Lindeman has released six startling and singular folk albums. She has been touring, along with opener and folk virtuoso Sam Amidon, on her latest two albums, the acclaimed pop-forward Ignorance (2021) and the looser and spare How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars (2022). Last night, however, was a long time coming. “We rescheduled this show five times,” she said, “and now we’re actually here.”
And how wonderful that they were. Lindeman began with an a cappella rendition of “Stars,” a meditation from her latest album on the cosmos-gazing of her youth and of now. The audience remained still and quiet as the band moved into the increasingly synth-y “Wear,” “Loss” and “Separated,” all on Ignorance. “But if you wanted to understand me, you could / If you wanted to hold my hand, you would / But you don’t want to / You’vе committed to this wall we sleep against,” she sang in a skip-hop falsetto over upbeat dance tracks. Walls are something of a preoccupation for Lindeman. The pandemic, she said, has brought into focus our wall-building, between one another and around climate change, an issue close to her heart and addressed in Ignorance. She urged the audience to remain open to a different future. “We have so much power,” she said. “It’s not about good or bad, it’s about open or closed.”
I thought about her words later in the set when she emerged for her runaway Ignorance hit, “Robber,” wearing a now-signature jacket of broken mirrors, throwing beams of light across the crowd. “You were two halves of the same piece / Divided into two,” she sang, “No, the robber don’t hate you.” Lindeman ended her set and encore with “Thirty,” the Joni Mitchell-esque standout from the band’s self-titled 2017 album. The song was explosive onstage and a forward-looking coda to a night of excellent music. Even in a city of musical riches, the Weather Station shine especially brightly. —Rachel Brody | @RachelCBrody
Photo courtesy of Jeff Bierk