Humanhood

‘Humanhood’ is the most full-throated creation from The Weather Station to date. The relief is that they still have something really worth saying, which makes the album an early yardstick for all the releases to follow across the rest of the year.

The group effort renders Humanhood’s songs lush and circuitous, seemingly propelled by an internal logic that’s being pieced together as you hear it.

Linderman owes what happened to her with this superbly honed musical novella. [Feb 2025, p.80]

The album has an unsettling undercurrent of synths buzzing and swirling with chaotic sounds that never truly recede as Linderman tries to capture the detachment we feel in everyday life. Even the short instrumentals (“Descent”, “Passage”, “Fleuve” and “Aurora”) act as off-putting placeholders, and while some tracks take that disjointedness to extremes, it is a crucial part of Linderman’s message on Humanhood, cutting through the static for true meaning. The artsy-folk stylings would not pack as much of a punch if it weren’t for the fantastic drumming/percussion of Adams and Melanson, who ground/drive the songs forward.

Those who take the time to unpack and absorb the content will almost certainly find aspects that crawl beneath the skin, but the collection is only as hard-hitting as the listener is receptive to the experience. It’s musically calming like a dusky sky pinpricked with stars, but unforgivingly immediate in its focus, like the underlying promise of thunder.