Written by Spike Sidor

HOW IS IT THAT I SHOULD LOOK AT THE STARS

The Weather Station How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars Review Album Cover

THE WEATHER STATION

2022 BAROQUE SINGER-SONGWRITER/INDIE-FOLK

How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is the sixth full length release from Tamara Lindeman’s recording project The Weather Station. I’ve been following Lindeman’s music since their third release but to be open about it I have never approached the point of being a fan. They are all about potential with earlier albums being garden-variety whispery indie-folk but I’ve always felt that with improved songwriting and Lindeman finding a more unique approach they could be great, plenty of artists have made this exact transition and oftentimes the revelation comes when working with an expanded sound.

Then last year they broke out with the grandiose Ignorance but the band couldn’t run from their problems, they just packed them up and moved them to a new neighborhood. It frolics across the field of your auditory senses with a bevy of pretty instrumentation; yet with all the notes rushing through your ears it still comes off bland. I can swear I’ve heard it before and at the same time can’t place it for the life of me. Shortly after it dropped I wrote a fast and rather rude review airing out my vexed outrage. It’s never been published and shall remain smoldering in silence on my hard drive. In that piece I describe the record as insipid, devoid of intrigue, and not a new experience just a new release.

This 2022 effort evokes those same feelings but we swapped lush orchestration for soft piano. Thirty odd minutes of middling balladry and poetry, that’s seriously it. Okay, there is the occasional sax and various other accents but largely it’s the Lindeman and her dainty keys ASMR show. It opens with Marsh, quiet and contemplative with a short story of internet arguments and nature walks. Cute but not compelling, our familiar companions when listening to The Weather Station. Much of the runtime is like this, for the readers sake I will not go through each track in detail. Endless Time is a touch more graceful. The lyrics here tell of an end of a relationship and the nostalgia associated with it, nothing earth shattering but I do enjoy bits of the imagery.

We can still walk out on the street and buy champagne grapes
Strawberries and lilies in November rain
It never occurred to us to have to pay

The piano gets wavering accompaniment on Ignorance. Irrespective of Its call back name the content is intriguing. Lindeman hits us with a “I’m fourteen and this is deep” observation bemoaning the guy who gave the magpie a name for caging it’s beauty to that word. Ridiculous, but she is aware of that and immediately gets self-deprecating, pointing out her need to find weighty meaning in everything. I wish more of this was on the record, a look into Lineman’s idiosyncrasies. It’s this personability that this album needs, not watery tales of love and loss. There is a duet with masculine vocals on To Talk About but it would be awkward if he wasn’t as sleepy as his company so it ends up as boring as the rest. Sway is easily my favorite of the listing in part to its heightened passion. The piano is played with a real degree of urgency and its sweet repetitions bring a catchiness that has been completely absent so far. The smooth poetry of tender moments shared with a lover are a delight.

When I watch you dance
You fling your hands, you laugh and laugh
High above thе street, nobody gets to see you dance like this but mе
When you sway, I sway, and if I could love you more
I have not yet found a way

Beyond these handful of tracks it’s tedious wall to wall weeping balladry. Maybe my short thoughts on How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars don’t call for a full review but this is a case of its not me its the subject matter. There is only so much that can be said of something so unremarkable. It does one thing and while it can be said that one thing is done competently it hardly matters when its strongest quality is its ability to rock its audience into an unintended evening nap. It’s tempting to say that How Is It is an okay record, there is no “damn that was horrible” moment, but it’s not okay. It offends with its inoffensiveness. 

3-4/10

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