Watch The Weather Station's new video for "Atlantic"

Tamara Lindeman shows off her swank mirror suit in the video for "Atlantic" off the Weather Station's new Ignorance album. 

Here's the scoop...

The Weather Station - a project of Toronto's Tamara Lindeman - has just released a new single/video, “Atlantic”, from her forthcoming album, Ignorance, out February 5th on Next Door Records. “Atlantic” follows “Tried To Tell You” and “Robber,” both of which have received glowing praise, including Pitchfork and Paste deeming the latter one of the best songs of 2020. “Atlantic” furthers Ignorance’s sophisticated turn in sound, bursting with urgent percussion, flutters of woodwind and strings, and Lindeman’s cool voice. The song finds the narrator prone on a cliff, watching a sunset as frightening as it is beautiful, “blood red floods the Atlantic.” In the accompanying video which visualizes the song’s quiet terror, we once again see Lindeman adorned in her mirrored suit, though this time, she is front and center surrounded by her full band performing in the dimly lit woods. She aimed to capture the intensity of the band in a traditional music video performance video, but in such a way that it subverted the form in mysterious ways.

“Trying to capture something of the slipping feeling I think we all feel, the feeling of dread, even in beautiful moments, even when you’re a little drunk on a sea cliff watching the sun go down while seabirds fly around you; that slipping feeling is still there, that feeling of dread, of knowing that everything you see is in peril,” says Lindeman. “I feel like I spend half my life working on trying to stay positive. My whole generation does. But if you spend any time at all reading about the climate situation circa now, positivity and lightness are not fully available to you anymore; you have to find new ways to exist and to see, even just to watch the sunset. I tried to make the band just go crazy on this one, and they did. This is one where the music really makes me see the place in my mind; the flute and the guitar chasing each other, wheeling around like birds, the drums cliff like in their straightness; I love the band on this one.”

Through Ignorance, Lindeman has created a novel sonic landscape for The Weather Station. It is sensuous, ravishing, as hi-fi a record as Lindeman has ever made, breaking into pure pop at moments, at others a dense wilderness of notes; a deeply rhythmic and painful record that feels more urgent and clear than her work ever has. The natural world is everywhere on this record, intruding with force and poignancy.

Ignorance marks Lindeman’s first experience writing on keyboard, not guitar, and her first time building out arrangements before bringing them to a band. It features an impressive crew of musicians, including Kieran Adams (drums, percussion), Ben Whiteley (bass), Philippe Melanson (percussion), Brodie West (saxophone), and Ryan Driver (flute). The band was rounded out by Johnny Spence (keys) and Christine Bougie (guitar); Lindeman played piano, sang, and contributed distorted guitar solos. Montreal producer Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire) co-produced, with Lindeman, and also mixed the record.

The lyrics across Ignorance roil with conflict. “I used to be an actor, now I’m a performer,” Lindeman says. In those roles she often finds herself to be the subject of projection, reflecting back the ideas and emotions of others. In turn, the album cover shows Lindeman laying in the woods, wearing a hand made suit covered in mirrors. Throughout Ignorance, she sings of trying to wear the world as a kind of ill fitting, torn garment, dangerously cold; “it does not keep me warm / I cannot ever seem to fasten it” and of walking the streets in it, so disguised and exposed. 

The Weather Station will present a full band performance of Ignorance in its entirety on Thursday, February 11th. Tickets for the livestream are available here. Watch "Atlantic" below. 

 

Happy Birthday LaVern Baker!

Raising a glass to LaVern Baker on her day with the Phil Spector-produced "Voodoo Voodoo" from 1961.

Carl Hall's rare deep soul recordings compiled by Omnivore

The 19-track Carl Hall retrospective You Don't Know Nothing About Love includes 13 unissued tracks.

Carl Hall’s four-octave range first came into prominence on the gospel sides he cut in the 1950s for labels like Vee-Jay and Savoy. His later acting work on Broadway (Inner City, The Wiz, and Truly Blessed: A Musical Celebration Of Mahalia Jackson) and in the film version of Hair was renowned. But it’s the soul sides he cut for the Loma and Atlantic labels, with producer Jerry Ragovoy, that are most sought after. You Don’t Know Nothing About Love: The Loma/Atlantic Recordings 1967-1972 recirculates Hall's best work and true to Omnivore's deep digging style, uncovers a few recordings from the vaults which many deep soul collectors never knew existed.

The Omnivore label's 19-track CD, out now, collects the singles from this era and adds an astonishing 13 previously unissued tracks. In addition to the title tune, “I Don’t Wanna Be (Your Used To Be),” and Hall’s take on Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love,” You Don’t Know Nothing About Love gathers unreleased versions of hits from The Beatles (“The Long And Winding Road”), Broadway’s Stop The World — I Want To Get Off (“What Kind Of Fool Am I”)… and even The Rolling Stones, who themselves had a hit with their cover of Ragovoy’s “Time Is On My Side,” represented here in a pair of unissued versions.

You Don’t Know Nothing About Love acts as both a primer and a definitive statement on Hall’s six years under the Warner Bros. umbrella. The mystery of why so much of this music lingered in the vaults for so many decades is discussed by Bill Dahl in his liner notes which includes a a historical overview of both Hall’s and his colleagues’ careers.

Writes Dahl: “The stratospheric four-octave vocal range of Carl Hall was truly a gift from on high. No less an esteemed authority than Anthony Heilbut declared him the finest male soprano in gospel. But after establishing himself in the sacred field, Hall crossed over to the secular arena, cutting a series of mesmerizing soul singles that showcased his uncanny vocal mastery just as vividly as those spirituals had.”


You Don't Know Nothing About Love: The Loma/Atlantic Recordings 1967-1972
1. You Don’t Know Nothing About Love*
2. Mean It Baby*
3. Just Like I Told You
4. He’ll Never Love You
5. It Was You (That I Needed)
6. The Dam Busted*
7. I Don’t Wanna Be (Your Used to Be)*
8. Dance Dance Dance
9. What Kind of Fool Am I?
10. Sometimes I Do
11. The Long and Winding Road
12. It’s Been Such A Long Way Home
13. Time Is on My Side
14. Need Somebody to Love*
15. Change With the Season*
       Alternate Takes:
16. Just Like I Told You
 (Take 7)
17. It Was You (That I Needed) (Take 12)
18. The Dam Busted (1971 Remake)
19. Time Is on My Side (Takes 1 & 2) 

       All selections previously unissued except *