The Weather Station – Ignorance
The State of Things
Both the following statements seem to be equally true.
The good news is that earlier predictions were off and the world isn’t ending.
The bad news is that earlier predictions were right and the world is fast turning fecal.
Living’s often a hard balancing act between being optimistic and being realistic. It requires a near-constant attitude calibration both towards one’s own life and towards the world in general, especially when the world seems simultaneously to be the safest and most prosperous it’s ever been (pre-pandemic), and beset with inequities and at risk of a climate apocalypse (both pre-pandemic and during it).
Juxtaposing personal loss with the state of the world today has led me to a question I really need to stop asking so often: is the world coming to an end? I mean, it isn’t. It isn’t, right? Just rationally speaking, it likely isn’t. Plus, purely from a utilitarian viewpoint, even if you were equipped with the steadfast belief in the world’s imminent destruction, what sort of positive action could that view possibly lead you to take? In what way is that pessimistic insight actionable? Isn’t it better to believe the world meanders along inertially until affected, either positively or negatively, by our own positive and negative actions, as individuals, as collectives, as a species? And isn’t it the same with the microcosm of the world that is one’s own life? The good things you do improve the microcosm, the bad worsen it. And once the system’s various inefficiencies are taken into account, a better microcosm must, for those of above average privilege and average fortune, mean a better existence. A worse microcosm must mean a worse existence. It’s a complicated representation of karma: what goes around, comes around. Therefore, isn’t it best to believe the world, and one’s life, to be fundamentally salvageable, leading to the positive action of doing good deeds, right action?
Ignorance
On the Weather Station’s Ignorance, Canadian smart-pop purveyor Tamara Lindeman explores these entangled realities and where they intersect through the twin lenses of frustration with a dying relationship and the fear of a dying planet. There are two readings of the album, both equally valid. On the one hand, these are songs of loss and heartbreak; on the other these are songs about humanity’s unfolding divorce with the natural world. Its title could just as easily reference a romantic partner’s wilful ignorance of the growing gulf at the centre of a relationship as humanity’s wilful ignorance of its own patterns of behaviour and flawed economic incentives that have brought it to an existential crossroads. To be clear, this isn’t my broken heart reading in alternative interpretations where there aren’t any like some teachers of English Lit do; it’s the intended reading of several of the album’s tracks. Just contrast the second verse of one of the album’s standout tracks, Separated –
To carry for you out in the open fields
I bore it by feel
In my stupid desire to heal
Every rift every cut I feel
As though I wield some power here
I lay my hands over all your fear
This gushing running river here
That spills out over these plains
– with the denouement of its opener, another standout, Robber.
No, the robber don't hate you
He had permission
Permission by words
Permission of thanks
Permission by laws
Permission of banks
White table cloth dinners
Convention centers, it was all done real carefully.
Neither of these songs, like the album that contains them, are either specifically about the crumbling of a relationship with another person or about the crumbling of a relationship with the natural world. They’re both, like the album that contains them, about both. While this subject matter can seem dark, Ignorance is, at its core, an album that speaks to survival, to right action. It walks the tightrope between optimism and realism expertly, buoyed primarily by its clever lyricism.
Denouement
At the end of the day, much of the album serves as a great example of how exceptional lyrics, when supplemented by able instrumentation, elevate good music to very good or even great music. You can sing about emotions without being mawkish. You can speak about fundamental issues without being pessimistic. You can address wrongs without being angry. After all, what goes around, comes around. I haven’t heard a better 2021 album so far (granted we’re only 36 days in, but still).
