Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A breakthrough album can turn into a stumbling block. So it has proved with The Weather Station’s Ignorance, one of the standout releases of 2021. It marked the peak of Tamara Lindeman’s work with her meteorologically named band. Its songs were sinuously arranged and expressively performed. They tackled the pre-eminent issue of climate change, but did so without becoming weighed down by self-importance or preachiness. The album lifted The Weather Station beyond the Toronto indie scene in which they formed in 2006. But Lindeman fumbled the challenge of following it up with How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. Released in 2022, it was billed as a companion album to Ignorance, featuring songs written at the same time. Sparsely arranged and wispy, they were like afterthoughts. Humanhood is better, although it too struggles to move on from its predecessor. It’s about the stages of a personal breakdown. “I’ve gotten used to feeling like I’m crazy,” Lindeman sings in opening song “Neon Signs”. The causes are opaque, “connected to something I can’t explain”. In the title track, the singer describes herself as “carrying a body that’s tired from carrying a mind”, as though burdened by the human condition. Closing track “Sewing” finds her in a tentative state of recovery, making a homemade quilt. The metaphor is heavy-handed, but the music is subtle.Tracks flow into each other without pause. The effect is meant to stitch them together like the quilt in “Sewing”. However, it also serves to accentuate the saminess of songs such as “Body Moves” and “Ribbon”. Ignorance’s shadow hangs heaviest over “Irreversible Damage”, a meandering affair with a semi-audible voiceover about environmental ruin. The best moments have a lighter, looser feel. Structure is provided by jazzy drumbeats from Kieran Adams. Improvisational musician Karen Ng adds a mazy scribble of wind instrument parts. Lindeman plays piano contemplatively and sings in a way that manages, intriguingly, to make her sound collected yet also on the verge of evaporating. There are steps forward here, but not enough for the next breakthrough.★★★☆☆Released by Fat Possum
