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The musician Tamara Lindeman founded the Canadian folk band the Weather Station in 2006, but it could be argued that she didn’t truly find the project’s calling until 2021, with the band’s majestic album “Ignorance.” One of the best LPs of that year, the music explored our ongoing ecological emergency, mustering up personal meditations from inside the climate crisis. “I feel as useless as a tree in a city park / Standing as a symbol of what we have blown apart,” Lindeman sang on “Tried to Tell You.” The songs are scenic, and filled to the brim with the wonders of the outside world—wild roses with crumpled petals, misshapen reeds and rushes; shearwaters, robins, crows, and thrushes; the wind on the water; the sun in all its splendor, setting or slinking through the blinds; pink clouds amassing against the cliffs.
Photograph by Brendan George Ko
The musical possibilities of the Weather Station seemed to open up with “Ignorance,” and then 2022 brought a companion release, and together they capture the beautiful fragility of our planet. On the followup, “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars,” the elevated folk-pop of the original blurred into an awe-inspired jazz, unfurling into a boundless, tranquil expanse, where the great outdoors isn’t just a refuge from an unfeeling digital society; it’s a panacea for human self-absorption.
On the Weather Station’s new album, “Humanhood,” Lindeman’s way of seeing the world deepens. Trying to figure out “how to be an activist and talk to people about this issue emotionally,” as she put it to Interview magazine, led her to self-analysis, to thinking about dissociation and the importance of staying connected to one’s feelings and to the natural order. In exploring this connectivity, Lindeman extends the reach of her music further than ever, while also continuing to grow the Weather Station’s sound into a vespertine orchestral domain all its own. “Some people don’t want to see the seams / They want it all done by machine,” she sings on “Sewing,” her voice gently breaking apart amid subdued piano and drums. “Straight and plain, no traces of making / But no two days are ever the same.” Finding and embracing the traces of making—on both intimate and environmental scales—has become her guiding creative principle. The Weather Station plays Bowery Ballroom on April 1 and Music Hall of Williamsburg on April 2.—Sheldon Pearce
About Town
Off Broadway
The Wooster Group explores its archive with the wistful Nayatt School Redux, returning to a 1978 piece composed by Elizabeth LeCompte and Spalding Gray, with Libby Howes, Joan Jonas, and Ron Vawter. Originally, Gray played T. S. Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party,” on a record player, his monologue exploding into zany antics. Now Scott Shepherd channels Gray, and with his fellow-actors reënacts juddering, black-and-white documentation from the period. The Wooster doyenne Kate Valk tells stories about that long-ago cast, recalling the day she had to commit Howes, after the actress began imagining mystic correspondences. Someone, Howes had insisted, was coming—her mania eerily reflecting Eliot’s play, in which a young ascetic follows inner voices into harm’s way.—Helen Shaw (Performing Garage; through March 29.)
Classical
The composer Yoko Kanno is a pioneer of soundtracking anime. She grew up in Miyagi, Japan, and, though her family had little interest in music, she learned piano and attended music school as a child, eventually going on to arrange songs for her college’s pop-music club and compose for commercials. Her unplanned crossover into anime feels unequivocally natural. Kanno wrote a particularly dynamic score for the 1998 show “Cowboy Bebop,” which channels the fever of the jazz subgenre. At Town Hall, Kanno showcases vibrant selections from “Cowboy Bebop,” with the help of the saxophonist Logan Richardson and a nearly twenty-person ensemble.—Jane Bua (Town Hall; March 29.)
Art
Photograph © Richard Learoyd / Courtesy Pace Gallery
If the range of subjects in Richard Learoyd’s new photographs—portraits, nudes, still-lifes, landscapes—suggests an academic exercise, look closer. The work’s mannerist formality is subverted by a haunting presence and an oddity that edges into the surreal. Credit Learoyd’s unique approach to the camera obscura—here, a painstakingly elaborate process of his own design that gives his images a depth that tempts touch. In the portraits, solitary young women and an androgynous boy, all unconventional beauties, emerge from spaces that feel not just empty but endless: a seductive void. Arrangements of flowers—wilted tulips, tangled poppies—and a triptych of gnarly elephant skulls have the uncanny, 3-D quality of antique stereoscopic views.—Vince Aletti (Pace; through April 26.)
R. & B.
The singer-songwriter Ravyn Lenae is a testament to staying the course. After joining the soul and rap collective Zero Fatigue, she signed with Atlantic Records in 2016. A pair of EPs earned her slots on tours with SZA and Noname, but she didn’t release her début album, “Hypnos,” until 2022. The music proved worth the wait, and revealed Lenae to be a master of R. & B. Shapeshifting songs incorporate stone-cold funk, electro, Afrobeats, and neo soul, her malleable, cotton-candy vocals dissolving into every luscious soundbed. For a followup, in 2024, she retrofitted an already vibrant sound into something more precise. “Bird’s Eye” is enriching and fluid, imbued with the effortless execution of someone now invoking muscle memory.—S.P. (Blue Note; April 1-2.)
Dance
Photograph by Camilla Greenwell
Hip-hop dance troupes often specialize in precision, but Boy Blue, from Britain, takes exactitude to another level, perfectly synchronizing with the music. It surely helps that the company is run by a choreographer, Kenrick (H2O) Sandy, and by a composer-d.j., Michael (Mikey J) Asante. Much of Boy Blue’s previous work was darkly dramatic, heavy with messaging. But “Cycles,” the hourlong piece it’s performing for its return to Lincoln Center, is dance, dance, dance. The group choreography is somehow both jerky and smooth, sprinkled with flashes of individual freestyle brilliance. The music is British hip-hop—jungle, grime, sometimes short on funky groove. The meld between it and the dancing is simply amazing.—Brian Seibert (Rose Theatre; March 27-29.)
Movies
The meteoric career of the brilliantly inventive comedian Andy Kaufman—who appeared in the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” and became a household name with “Taxi”—gets a thrilling and troubling exploration in the documentary “Thank You Very Much,” directed by Alex Braverman. With access to troves of archival footage, Braverman shows Kaufman transforming the very nature of comedy by launching the put-on into existential extremes. Interviews with friends and colleagues—including Bob Zmuda, Danny DeVito, Marilu Henner, and Lorne Michaels—show how his relentlessly creative audacity torpedoed his career, leaving him desperately isolated as he faced a terminal illness. Examining Kaufman’s childhood and his distinctive range of pop-cultural touchstones, Braverman celebrates the comedian’s uproarious art while probing the anguish that fuelled it.—Richard Brody (In theatrical release and streaming on demand starting March 28.)
Pick Three
Inkoo Kang on alternatives to “The White Lotus.”
HBO’s “The White Lotus” is once again dominating the cultural conversation. But the current season isn’t as fizzy or as incisive as the two before. Here are three other shows to check out instead.
1. Mike White’s previous HBO series, “Enlightened,” remains an underwatched gem. Laura Dern plays a divorcée who experiences transcendence on an absurdly expensive spiritual retreat, and attempts to bring her vacation self back to her regular life as a suburban corporate drone. She faces skepticism from her no-nonsense mom (played by Dern’s mother, Diane Ladd), but does find an ally in a co-worker (White). Dern is in top form playing a woman who feels too much—and makes that everyone else’s problem.
2. In “I Love Dick” (Prime Video), a married feminist filmmaker (Kathryn Hahn) from New York ends up in Marfa, Texas, and finds creative rejuvenation in her overwhelming lust for the bohemian town’s artistic A-lister (Kevin Bacon). It’s a tour de force of a comedy—a hilarious and picturesque tale of unruly female horniness and the humiliations of desire.
Illustration by Laura Simonati
3. HBO’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” tetralogy offers a lived-in beauty in its backdrops of a changing Italy, against which a difficult, lifelong friendship between two fiercely competitive women goes through its painfully recognizable convolutions. The series doesn’t get enough credit for its charms: its urgent Max Richter score; the stylish, character-illuminating costumes; and the postcard-ready scenes of the island of Ischia, where so many bad decisions are made.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet:
- Here comes the sun
- Bill Burr is having a moment
- It’s Gwenyth Paltrow’s world
An earlier version of this article misstated the date of Yoko Kanno’s performance.
Sourse: newyorker.com
