The Weather Station discover "Tapes" under the bed [Premiere]

29 April 2015, 15:00 | Written by Ro Cemm

(Tracks)

(The Weather Station)

A lot has changed since we first fell under the spell of The Weather Station back in 2009 with the raw emotion of The Line. 2011's All Of It Was Mine saw Tamara Lindeman growing in confidence - both in her playing and songwriting - her subtle arrangements channelling those same raw, intimate emotions into one of the finest folk records released that year. A series of duets with the likes of Baby Eagle, Marine Dreams and Daniel Romano followed, along with last year's What Am I Going To Do With Everything I Know EP.

Having spent much of last year touring with Bahamas, Lindeman relocated from Toronto to La Frette Studios outside of Paris to record her new album (with assistance from Afie Jurvanen [Bahamas] and Robbie Lackkritz [Feist]).

Lindeman describes the studio, located in a 19th Century Mansion, as being “a secret garden, a place of enchantment and grace.” The resulting record, Loyalty, fully realises the potential of all that has come before. True to the place in which it was recorded, Loyalty is a record to escape to and get lost in: Lindeman’s delicate voice and carefully constructed songs soothing, comforting and cooling in equal measure.

The elegiac "Tapes" is the most stripped back moment of Loyalty. Intimate and vulnerable, the track finds Lindeman discovering and listening back to a set of long lost tapes found under a bed. A weary, muffled drumbeat punctuates her memories as a guitar gently picks out seemingly half-remembered chords.

There’s a bruised vulnerability to the vocal delivery: an eerie, pained exhalation of grief, along with a realisation that “I’m older now than you ever were / or ever will become”. Every creaking of a floorboard or scrape of a string adds to the intense atmosphere as instruments begin to layer and overwhelm the vocals - reduced to nothing more than a wordless, bereft howl.

A moving, melancholic though magnificent piece of work.