A little over three years ago, Tamara Lindeman aka The Weather Station released All Of It Was Mine, an unassuming record full of small truths plucked from summer breezes, wandering wisdom lost and elated. The songs felt slight; beautifully so. Lindeman’s gentle plucking and expert cadence lent her uncomplicated folk songs a great strength of character and depth.
On this proper follow-up EP, Lindeman shifts focus faintly without compromising anything that made her earlier work so alluring. However, the scent is slighter here, and to fully get a sense of things, repeated close-listening is required. At a scant seventeen minutes, What Am I Going To Do is a small, nuanced gift.
That being said, Lindeman’s voice feels a little richer and her narratives prove more idiosyncratic; in this way, the songs on What Am I Going To Do have more to offer, though they never do so outright. Lindeman unfurls her stories with great modesty bolstered by instantly memorable melodies. The morals here appear in minute details. Many of the songs revolve around absences: of words, of vessels, of understanding, of places to call home.
What Am I Going To Do represents an intoxicating development, the sound of Lindeman coming carefully into her own and balancing, steady-footed, at new heights. With a full-length slated for 2015, this EP functions expertly as a teaser of the great things to come from one of Canada’s finest folk performers.
