On the Stereo: Weather Station, Yola, Benjamin Booker A Complete Unknown Soundtrack, David Gray, Rufus Wainwright
The Weather Station—Humanhood [2025]
Humanhood emerges from a haze of gently dissonant woodwinds and strings, slowly coalescing into softly insistent "Neon Signs," a song where the folk, jazz, and pop aspects of the Weather Station indelibly intertwine. Once an unadorned indie-folk project led by singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman, the Weather Station evolved into a sophisticated jazz-inflected outfit with Ignorance, the 2021 album that found Lindeman expanding her aural palette and earning widespread acclaim. Humanhood falls somewhere between a continuation and a response to Ignorance. The title itself is a signal that after spending an album exploring the existential dread of climate change, Lindeman is now looking inward, grappling with emotions both heavy and delicate. The empathetic interplay of the Weather Station lends a deep warmth to Lindeman's songs, rendering them with a sense of tender urgency that lets the music linger in the memory long after it's finished playing. An exceptionally lovely album.
A Complete Unknown (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [2024]
Full disclosure: I haven't yet had a chance to see A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic directed by James Mangold and starring Timothée Chalamet as the Bard. Maybe that means I don't have a good handle on what A Complete Unknown (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) means in relation to the movie itself but, then again, these recordings aren't featured in the film. Mangold opted for live