Foto-© Brendan George Ko
Über die Bedeutung des Menschseins sinniert die in Toronto lebende Künstlerin Tamara Lindeman auf persönlichste Art und Weise auf ihrem neuen Album Humanhood, das sie als The Weather Station am letzten Freitag via Fat Possum veröffentlicht hat. Humanhood wurde in zwei Sessions im Herbst 2023 in der Canterbury Music Company mit dem Schlagzeuger Kieran Adams, dem Keyboarder Ben Boye, dem Perkussionisten Philippe Melanson, der Hornspezialistin Karen Ng und dem Bassisten Ben Whiteley aufgenommen. Lindeman und Co-Produzent Marcus Paquin wollten den plötzlichen Funken dieser neuen Begegnungen hören und sehen, wie alle in Echtzeit auf die von ihr vorgelegten Songs und Skizzen reagierten. Andere Freunde wie der Gitarrist Sam Amidon, James Elkington und Joseph Shabason fügten anschließend eigene Stücke hinzu. In der Endphase half Mixer Joseph Lorge dabei, diese musikalischen Netze zu weben, und das Album wurde zu einem fast durchgängigen Stück Musik, bei dem instrumentale Passagen in die Songs ein- und ausgeblendet werden.
Wir haben im Dezember via Zoom mit Lindemann über ihr Album und den Entstehungsprozess gesprochen. Sie erzählt, warum sie nicht über Klima, sondern sich selbst geschrieben hat; wie es war, die Dichte der Aufnahmesessions auflösen zu müssen, um die Songs freizulegen und warum sie viele Songs nicht beenden konnte. Wir sprechen über unterschiedliche Formen von Musik, Nähe durch Kopfhörer, warum Liveshows und Alben zwei unabhängige Konzepte sind und warum sie gerne mehr wie Dolly Parton wäre.
We’re here to talk about your new album Humanhood. In German it is a very big word, it opens the perspective on things. When did you decide to name the album Humanhood?
The title came first. I felt it was a big enough, big, juicy, full-course meal of a word. We don’t use it in English. It’s in the dictionary, but I’ve never heard anyone say it. The record is personal. It is my story. But there were a number of reasons why I wanted to call the album that. It’s a beautiful title for a record about struggle, about your humanhood. I talked a lot about climate on Ignorance. It’s been an amazing journey and the honor of my life to have had the opportunity to talk about it in so many different spaces and try to bring ideas out into the world, but I couldn’t write about climate. Going inward and choosing a title that would allow me to shine a light on questions about human nature and what it means to be a person felt meaningful to me at this time. I’m still thinking about it a lot. It feels very relevant.
It is interesting how different connotations from languages or knowledge feed into the reading of art. When you go into the creative process, do you have other people in mind? Do you do it for yourself and then share it? Or do you do it for connection? What do you think is the ultimate starting point for you when you write songs?
It’s an internal battle, because as an artist you have to find the part of you that is unobserved. If you think about what somebody else is going to think, you’re probably going to make bad stuff. We all struggle with that. I particularly battle with it because Ignorance had done so well and I suddenly had an audience. I was really scared. I didn’t know how to handle that. It’s this struggle to find the part of me that’s free and that’s just expressing because I know that’s the most honest. But at the same time I really care about communication and connection. Music is a connection to someone else’s mind or experience that makes me feel less alone. The companions in my life, books and music, are very important to me. And so, especially in the later stages, I think a lot about how something is going to come across. I think a lot about the listener’s experience. It’s a struggle, because as soon as you start thinking about listeners on social media and how Spotify is going to place it algorithmically, you’re dead in the water. I think a lot about lyrics and how I can include enough context so that what I’m saying is clear and there’s meaning, but not so much context that I’m cutting off people’s potential interpretations of the song. It’s always a funny line to walk.

For me as a listener, music is more interesting when you can translate it into your own concepts. If it’s very straightforward, it’s a completely different journey. It’s consuming versus being part of it. Humanhood is a long record. That and the shorter parts between the songs are not very streaming friendly. How did you put it together? What ended up on the record? What was that journey like?
That was the hard part because I had a lot of unfinished songs, and I had a band that was really great so they could play anything. We just recorded a lot. I knew the arc, I knew it had to go through this darkness and then come out the other side. It was hard to figure out what songs could tell this story that existed because songs are so short. There are not a lot of words in a song. I think it landed in the right place, but it was very difficult. One of my favorite songs I’ve ever written is not on the record because in terms of the story it comes after the last song. The story determined things, but at the same time it’s a patchwork. It’s not perfect. It’s not a direct narrative. I was going back and forth, and I really love the contrast on the record. It ended up in the right place, but it was very hard to curate. I tried to see it as a whole, but when you’re so close to it and you have your own personal feelings about everything, it’s very difficult.
Is it easier for you to see the bigger picture now?
Absolutely. I named my album Humanhood because I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with my own mind. I’m always in a battle between a part of me that’s very cerebral, thinking and wordy. And then there’s this other part that’s very rebellious. It sabotages me. And it’s funny because whenever I complete a record I go through a phase where I feel very depressed and sad that all these things I wanted it to be didn’t make the cut or weren’t possible or whatever it is. But I felt like with this record, looking back, that little rebellious part managed to sneak a bunch of stuff through. I don’t know why that happened. It’s kind of cool. There’s an element of being conscious and knowing what you’re doing and then there’s an element of your instincts. I’m talking about it in one of the songs. It’s a pretty confrontational song, but I’m talking about how sometimes your instincts almost have to knock you unconscious to get you to do the right thing. It’s messed up, but I hope the next time I make a record I’ll have learned a lot more about it.
Yes, the record is very detailed. The more you listen to it, the more you recognize it. That must be another curatorial process. I imagine it is like making a collage and adding detail after detail.
That’s cool, but honestly it was the opposite. It’s like a negative collage. I started with way too much. I had the six-piece band in the studio and someone like Karen [Ng], she’ll just play and there’s a million beautiful little melodies. She’s a fountain of melody and so is Ben Boye. There were some songs where we had so many layers of percussion: drums, electronic drums, percussion, another layer of percussion, then this other person went in and did another layer. The tracks were so dense that I actually could not open them. It was too many tracks of live stuff and overdubs. It was so much material. The challenge was to pare it back enough that you keep some of the density and there are moments where that density comes through, but you can still hear the lyrics and follow the melody. For Window, for example, it was a heroic effort. My collaborator Marcus [Paquin] was the one who really, really cleaned that up. I’ve joked that I could make a record just called Overdubs and mute what was originally played, just play the overdubs and it would be a really wild, experimental jazz record. It’s about figuring out how to direct the listening experience. I’m a headphone listener and if I love a record, I’ll listen to it over and over again. I’m obsessive. I only listen to a couple of records at a time. I don’t have a big palate. So I love records that are dense and have a lot of layers that I can uncover over time. So of course that’s what I wanted to make.
You knew that to record you had to find your way into the darkness and come out again. You had to do the same for writing. How do you get into that space?
That was actually the hardest thing about the record. And I think that’s why it was harder than other records because I felt like I needed to revisit or touch on those parts. Honestly, there were several songs in the dark chapter I couldn’t finish. When I made the record, I was still recovering. So, I couldn’t go back there. But the ones that are still there tell enough of the story. I wish I could be like Dolly Parton and write songs about fictional characters. That’s my dream. My ultimate goal is to be a country singer and write story songs about other people. I think that would be very healthy. But unfortunately, at the moment at least the part of me that makes me write a song is emotional. It’s something I can’t figure out. Something that feels tangled, it’s the psychological pressure that leads to a melody or a lyric.
With the release, promotion and touring of the album, you’re confronted with these feelings about yourself again. How do you deal with that?
That’s a good question. I think it’s something that people in the music industry don’t really understand, that it’s weird. It’s even weird when someone sends an email and they want to know which picture you want. And I have to look at myself again. I’m not that self-obsessed. I don’t want to see my own picture over and over again, or hear my own voice, or read my own words. I tend to procrastinate a lot. That’s my honest answer. But every time I’ve survived one of those cycles, I get a little bit of distance from the person on the record, or the aesthetic of the record takes over. It’s not like a persona, but it’s like a part. It always helps me to have a concept or a structure that doesn’t feel personal – a concept that I’m expressing with my body and myself. That’s how I separate myself a bit. If I was just a pure singer-songwriter and just wrote songs about my life, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Having a bit of conceptualism helps me get through it.
Talking about the complexity of music, I’m wondering about the different forms of music. There’s live music, there’s LPs, there’s music that plays in the background… What would you say is your core form of music? Is it having a record or are you doing it to play it live? And how is that different from being a listener?
I think I am a record person. I love records, I am a deep listener of records and I love creating a world. The studio is such a powerful thing. It’s world building. I also love live shows, but I think of them as separate, it’s almost like switching art forms. For me the live show is taking the spirit of the record and the song and letting it live free. It’s never going to be the same. You’re not trying to recreate it. For me, a record is a headphone experience and it’s meant for introspection. A live show is a collective experience. My vision is most fully realized on these last three records. On these last three records I feel like I finally figured out how to use the studio. Before that I was still struggling with directing people and getting things to sound the way I wanted. I finally got it. The live show is more fun for me. It’s more satisfying for me personally because it’s so much fun to play with a band. When you have the money to bring everybody, it’s great.
Thank you very much for the interview!
The Weather Station Tour:
26.02.25 Hamburg, Nochtspeicher
28.02.25 Berlin, Silent Green
