![Live Review: The Weather Station – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds [9th March 2025]](https://www.soundspheremag.com/wp-content/migration/images/stories/20250309_221905-scaled.jpg)
Words: Callie Petch
Just prior to the show’s start, I’m in the middle of suppressing a panic attack caused by reading a Defector article about how Mars colonisation is scientifically impossible and that this world being irreparably fucked up by billionaires like Elon Musk is all we have. (Also, that we’re all going to die someday.) This sounds very melodramatic and antithetical to the joy of a gig experience, I’m aware. We all subconsciously know that we’re all gonna die someday, that this is all we have, that the existence of humanity on this planet consists of barely a decimal of a percentile of the Earth’s current total lifespan, and that at some point in the hopefully very far-flung future (assuming an errant meteor doesn’t get us first) the gradual expansion of the sun will render all life on Earth uninhabitable for several millennia and eventually swallow the only planet in the solar system where life was able to blossom whole.
Most people are able to compartmentalise that knowledge as irrelevant to their day-to-day existence and get on with more pressing shit. For some of us, though, that kind of thought can lead to a very pleasant existential spiral whose uncertainty can feel suffocating. Call it a pedestrian fear of the unknown, if you want to be reductive, or perhaps a crippling excess of empathy which is not as great as it sounds. Either way, it carries a weight that’s hard to shake. And yet, in this one instance, such a thought train is occurring at a fitting home.
Photo by Callie Petch.
The Weather Station, experimental folk project led by Tamara Lindeman, have spent much of their last three albums across the past half-decade fixated on the prospect of an imminent environmental collapse. Backed by groove-laden string-drenched art rock, intimately spare piano balladry, and jazzy indie folk, Lindeman paints vivid pictures about depressive episodes triggered by the beauty of birds flying over parking lots, the silent gradual destruction of global warming personified as a phantom robber, and struggling to function in a society where nothing seems to matter and everybody is increasingly alone. The brilliance of Lindeman, and the collective of musicians she’s brought into the fold to help realise her songwriting over the years, comes from how these tunes rarely feel as crushing as they might read in prospect. The heavy subject matter is paired with utterly gorgeous instrumentation capable of soaring to transcendent emotional heights, production you can just swim within like a warm earthy hug, and Lindeman’s choir-trained voice carries deep feeling whilst possessing a softness which brings light into even the darkest of numbers. In short, the kind of music designed to help put this aforementioned panic attack at ease. Lower the racing speed of those thoughts, reward close listening, get me in tune with my self again rather than fixated on the abstract.
The Brudenell stage is crammed, though less so than when The Weather Station last visited in 2022 to tour their breakthrough album Ignorance. Befitting Humanhood’s focus on the growing chemistry of the band over these last five years – the pre-Ignorance albums were primarily a Lindeman solo project with sessioners brought in to help realise them – there are just five members on-stage tonight: Lindeman on vocals and guitar, Ben Boye on piano and keys, Ben Whiteley on bass, Dominic Billett on drums, and Karen Ng handling saxophone and flute. Behind them, at each of the stage’s three points, a trio of objects have been dressed to look like white cave rocks, evocative of the painting which makes Humanhood’s cover, and play host to abstracted projections of the natural world that gradually come into focus as the set progresses. Sparks flashing in the darkness, shoreline waves coming to and receding, Malick-ian footage of grass blades; the heartbreaking “Lonely” frames footage of bustling crowds into faceless disconnected voids, whilst “Tried to Tell You” drives through mountainous roads with a clarity that enhances its splendour.
Photo by Callie Petch.
With Humanhood eschewing traditional verse-chorus structures even further than Ignorance, it’s an atmosphere where silent, enraptured contemplation takes hold. Applause and appreciative whoops don’t arrive until the recognisable intro chords of “Robber” start up five songs in; not because the crowd are bored but because nobody in the room wants to be the one to break the spell. This first segment of the show – the set is divided into three distinct movements, something which is already so evident by the song groupings and evolution of the projections that Lindeman’s endearing if clumsy monologues transitioning between them are unnecessary – flows as one near-uninterrupted suite. The opening ambient improvisation of “Descent” gives way to a version of “Wear” with its climactic light-breaking outro excised, a pointed choice befitting the darkness theme of the first part and a signifier that the band will make subtle, often reducing, changes from the studio recordings of both Ignorance and Humanhood (the only two albums featured in the set) to recontextualise in this live setting. (Although it’s likely just as much a practical choice; touring string groups are expensive).
Some of these changes don’t quite pan out. The whirling “Window” loses something without its enveloping studio mix, and the band are still unable to figure out how “Parking Lot” – on-record one of the very best songs of the decade – can hit its magnificent climactic cascade without its strings; Ng’s saxophone tries to fill the hole but doesn’t fit the vibe. Meanwhile, placing two of Humanhood’s improvisational interludes, “Fleuve” and “Aurora,” back-to-back tiptoes right up to the edge of losing the crowd and becoming aimless, although it does mean that the groove of that album’s title track functions like flinging open musty blinds when they transition in. A part of me would also love to have heard a cut or two from the middle child of this thematic trilogy, 2022’s How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars, slotted in somewhere; their smoky jazz balladry would still have fit the arc of the show.
Photo by Callie Petch.
But by and large, The Weather Station are on mighty fine form tonight. Lindeman’s decision to keep the vocal melody of “Loss”’s titular chorus flat rather than constantly cartwheeling around the sky of her upper register enhances the melancholy of the song’s lyrics by negating the sweetener of the studio take. The group are highly attuned to what each member is playing, an equal collective in lockstep, infrequently cracking appreciative eye contact smiles at somebody else’s fill or lead-in. The skulking groove of “Mirror” feels even richer when witnessed in the room, and the aforementioned “Lonely” becomes a heartbreaking standout as the direct follow-up to the sweetly bruised “Body Moves.”
It’s the closer “Sewing,” however, introduced as Lindeman’s personal favourite song on Humanhood which is the night’s peak. Lindeman’s hushed poetic descriptions of a despairing depression front and centre as her bandmates try their best to not overpower her, Billet in particular dusting his drumkit with a feather touch, in both comfort and tension. As it does on the record, this quiet is eventually broken by rising organ-like synth drones which feel deafening by association and, crucially, like a fleeting mental breakthrough of hope. Full-body shivers are followed by ecstatic applause by the crowd before Lindeman and Boye resume the track’s coda, the latter’s piano chords eventually played so quiet that the key makes more noise than the notes themselves, as you can hear pins drop in the room. My panic attack has long since disappeared, the light has gotten back in.
