Amanda Petrusich Talks with the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amanda Petrusich describes herself as a “diehard fan” of folk music, but not when it feels precious or sentimental. That’s why she loves the Weather Station, whose songs, she thinks, “could take a punch to the face.” A solo project of the songwriter and performer Tamara Lindeman, the Weather Station’s new album, “Ignorance,” focusses on the theme of climate grief: Lindeman was responding to a devastating report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the consequences of elevated carbon levels for human societies. If that sounds heady, Lindeman tells Petrusich that it may be her heritage. “There’s this thread in Canadian music of philosophical songwriting, and that’s how I like my lyrics to be. I like them to be about ideas as well as stories. . . . Most people want songs that just tell a story; they don’t want the complicated ideas. But I do.” The Weather Station performs “Robber” and “Tried to Tell You,” with Evan Cartwright on percussion and Karen Ng on saxophone.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Amanda Petrosich may be familiar voice to you.
0:15.3	She writes about all kinds of music for The New Yorker, and she's often on our program talking about what she's listening to, what she's obsessed with. And for a few years, she's been singing the praises of a group
0:26.2	or really a solo project called The Weather Station. Here's Amanda Petrusich.
0:32.6	So my first introduction to the Weather Station, fronted by the singer and songwriter Tamara Lindemann, was incredibly, I think, almost a decade ago now.
0:42.8	I am a dedicated diehard fan of folk music in all its varied forms, but for me, a lot of contemporary iterations of the genre can feel a little precious, a little sentimental.
0:53.6	And what I love the most about
0:55.8	Lindemann's work is that it contained a bit of grit, a bit of toughness. I think the first time
1:01.4	I wrote about the band, I said one of the things that I loved about them was it felt like these
1:05.6	songs could take a punch to the face.
1:08.0	There was a time you put your hand on the small of my back.
1:12.4	I was surprised that you touched me like that.
1:15.2	But there in your hand was occurring of life I could hardly stand a state student.
1:21.2	The Weather Station's new record, which is called Ignorance, is an even bigger departure
1:26.0	from that traditional folk sound. And in some ways,
1:29.5	it still resembles the folk music that I love so much that I know has been a formative
1:33.5	influence for her. But in other ways, it just feels like a whole other universe of sound.
1:39.6	Thank you so much for doing this, Tamara. I'm thrilled to talk to you. I'm such a fan,
1:45.5	and I find the new record to just be extraordinary. It's been such a gift to have during this time.
1:51.0	So thank you for doing this. Oh, my God. Well, thank you so much. I'm really honored to do it.
1:56.0	This should be fun. So with each of your records, I feel like I can hear you kind of gently reinventing your sound
2:02.9	and really rethinking all the ways in which a person can communicate through melody and rhythm
	...

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