Toronto’s the Weather Station contend with a barrage of internal and external confusion on “Neon Signs,” the first offering from their upcoming album, Humanhood, out Jan. 17, 2025, via Fat Possum.
The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman said in a statement that she wrote “Neon Signs” at a moment when she was “feeling confused, upside down, at that moment when even desire falls away, and dissociation cuts you loose from a story that while wrong, still held things together.”
That chaotic uncertainty comes through in the lyrics of the atmospheric, piano-driven rocker — “Every neon sign every flashing light tries to fool you/Get you on their side, everybody swears they need you, and only you, to make the buy” — as well as the frenetic quality of the music video, directed by Lindeman and Jared Raab.
Of “Neon Signs,” Lindeman continued: “The song came with multiple strands entwined; the way that something that is not true seems to have more energetic intensity than something that is, the confusion of being bombarded with advertising at a moment of climate emergency, the confusion of relationships where coercion is wrapped in the language of love. Ultimately though, isn’t it all the same feeling?”
Humanhood will be the Weather Station’s first new album in several years, following the celebrated double-shot of 2021’s Ignorance and 2022’s How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. While both records received rave reviews and pushed Lindeman’s career to new heights, she was simultaneously in the middle of a mental health crisis. The songs that she wrote for Humanhood found her writing from the perspective of the present for the first time, rather than looking back to the past, as she recounted her journey back to connection.
The Weather Station recorded Humanhood last fall at Canterbury Music in Toronto. Lindeman co-produced the album with Marcus Paquin, and the album features Kieran Adams on Drums, Philippe Melanson on percussion, Ben Boye on keys, Ben Whiteley on bass, and Karen Ng on various reed and wind instruments. Other contributions came from Sam Amidon, James Elkington, Joseph Shabason, and Joseph Lodge.
The Weather Station will hit the road early next year in support of Humanhood, with a U.K. and European tour slated for February and March. No North American dates have been announced yet.
Humanhood Track List
1. “Descent”
2. “Neon Signs”
3. “Mirror”
4. “Window”
5. “Passage”
6. “Body Moves”
7. “Ribbon”
8. “Fleuve”
9. “Humanhood”
10. “Irreversible Damage”
11. “Lonely”
12. “Aurora”
13. “Sewing”
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