In excess virtue lies danger, or at least limits to pragmatic
action—it’s a lesson hard learned by anyone disillusioned by the erosion of
youthful mythologies. Strict fealty to a fxed ideal of identity doesn’t do us
any favors as adults. Loyalty, the third and fnest album yet by The Weather
Station (and the frst for Paradise of Bachelors) wrestles with these knotty
notions of faithfulness/faithlessness—to our idealism, our constructs of
character, our memories, and to our family, friends, and lovers—representing a
bold step forward into new sonic and psychological inscapes. It’s a natural
progression for Toronto artist Tamara Lindeman’s acclaimed songwriting
practice. Recorded at La Frette Studios just outside Paris in
the winter of 2014, in close collaboration with Afe Jurvanen (Bahamas) and
Robbie Lackritz (Feist), the record crystallizes her lapidary songcraft into
eleven emotionally charged vignettes and intimate portraits, redolent of fellow
Canadians Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and David Wiffen, but utterly
her own.
