Sharing is caring, Tamara…
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[6.00]
Alfred Soto: Tamara Lindeman sings as if she keeps her secrets close; the whorls of strings do the hinting. After a couple minutes the reticence feels like a vise.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: Tamara Lindeman’s attempt at self-restraint to save, not share aloud her feelings is a thing to admire in this day in social media culture, though it’s a practice not entirely kept as she commits them to record here. Her crystal-clear folk song reminds me more of the liberation felt from typing up a draft of what I want to just blurt out, only to delete the post right after it goes live. She rushes through like so as she recites her string of lyrics, naked and jumbled like tweets out of chronology. But even if the music make her alternative to modern heart share seem more easy-going, the last bittersweet lyric reveals it’s anything but.
[7]
Alex Clifton: I hear shades of Joan Shelley’s rich voice, Belle & Sebastian’s sunshine pop and First Aid Kit’s instrumentation in this song. It took me a while to find who The Weather Station were, though. It’s pleasant and kind of springy — there’s definitely nothing wrong with this song at all, and Tamara Lindeman’s voice is lovely to listen to — but I can’t differentiate it from much other modern alt-folk.
[5]
Tim de Reuse: Lindeman’s lyricism is honest and physical — love as an object with heft, a new beginning as a new body, faces as “unfamiliar assemblies.” Unfortunately, the rest of the song doesn’t give her metaphors near enough room to breathe; it’s uptempo to the point of feeling rushed along, and the mix is dense and thick with flavorless strings. All the intricate little details that could’ve added up to something terrific fight for attention and end up thoroughly un-memorable.
[5]
Ashley John: I’ve been trying so hard to place myself in a new city, to blind myself with the dazzling lights and go deaf in the whir of traffic. The world is so bright and beautiful on the outside that it’s easier or more polite, maybe, to swallow back all my noxious thoughts. I mold them instead like clay, work them into prettier shapes and then let them harden in late October’s cool air. Tamara Lindeman sings of the muddy clarity of choosing to build such an exterior. With a folky guitar she leads us through a tale of misguided thinking that if we choose to pull away from the world it is noble, only because we were steadfast and independent in making such a choice. But its dangerous clay crumbles and cracks, as Lindeman notes, when it eventually gets too heavy and the pieces cannot be rebuilt.
[7]
Iain Mew: Making something this simultaneously light and heavy is a delicate dance. It’s one that they move through beautifully and fluidly, keeping the extent of the dark frustration within as a slow reveal, the better to hit harder.
[7]