Herohill Reviews Banded Stilts’ “By The Back Stair” • 17.08.11

It’s almost too easy to hear a band like Banded Stilts and dismiss them with a lazy list of sonic comparisons. The Amherst outfit earns their keep with picked acoustic roots melodies bulked up with keep time drums, harmonies, mandolin, and banjo. Fans of the Great Lake Swimmers could embrace their sound openly, but the more interesting comparison is how easily Stephen’s deep (and at times surprisingly gritty) voice could front the fantastic West Coast collective, The Great Outdoors.

But the thing is, it’s the story not the familiar sounds that accompany it. By the Back Stair tells Canadian stories driven by honesty, broken hearts, and the freedom of youth. Haley doesn’t turn clever phrases, force metaphors or rely on stock imagery. He writes what he sees and that authenticity shines through. It might not be a reinvention of sound, but it’s an EP of enjoyable songs you can sing along too. Most times, that’s all you need.

http://www.herohill.com/2011/08/quick-hitters-banded-stilts-by-the-back-stair.htm

Grayowl Point Reviews Banded Stilts’ “By The Back Stair” • 17.08.11

Here’s yet another band to add to your “pretty folk band” list. And just because they’re another band to add to your list it doesn’t mean they’re not worth listening to.

Banded Stilts excel at the mellow and beautiful folk that conjures up comparisons sometimes to Dan Mangan and Bon Iver. Lead singer Steve Haley has a perfect voice for the genre- soft yet powerful, and with a small bit of country twang.

The EP gets off to a great start with likely the strongest track, “Forest, Oh Forest, Protect Me.” The song starts out with some simple acoustic picking and strums before Healey brings in some soft “ooh’s.” It’s a great nature-filled track.

Next up is “Full Swing” which starts off with a bunch of harmonica and shows off some great vocal harmonies. It’s a fun song about a gold rush, and the song is at its most powerful when Healey sings “Please come home.”

“The Owls” is a song that showcases the power of just guitars and has some great imagery of flying. It seems to be about flying away from one’s troubles, as shown through these lyrics: “I will try to fly/Before my days are over/I will leave this all behind.”

There are more instruments to take note of in “Anything With Legs” and it takes on a tone that could almost be country. The song makes many mentions of a city and its warmth.

The final song “Flee Into the Autumn Dark” is  another very pretty song with an emphasis on keys over guitar, a refreshing change. There’s also a lot of audible mandolin, also very refreshing.

This soft collection of songs makes great music to play after a long day. It’s comforting and warm, kind of like curling up with a blanket and a good book.

http://glasspaperweight.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/review-by-the-back-stair-banded-stilts/

The Toronto Star Reviews Banded Stilts’ “By The Back Stair” • 17.08.11

The six very different songs on the debut EP by Nova Scotia-based newcomers Banded Stilts reach back to the grand old folk traditions within a contemporary alt-roots sound. Singer-songwriter Steve Haley’s the mastermind, taking care of much of the vocals and acoustic guitar duty, accompanied by Brad Lannon, Marc Fagan, Reid Shepherd and Travis Hatcher. This is at times exuberant, at times soulful musical fun. Top track: “Full Swing,” a gold-rush tale that could’ve come from Neil Young’s early days.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1036440–banded-stilts-make-folk-new-again-and-more

Exclaim! Reviews The Weather Station’s “All Of It Was Mine” • 17.08.11

This is the second album from the Weather Station (aka singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman), a member of acclaimed ensemble Bruce Peninsula. Her 2009 debut, The Line, featured adventurous folk, while this lovely effort is sparser in its approach. The sessions took place with producer Daniel Romano at his home studio in Welland, ON, and he adds guitars, drums, bass and backing vocals. Lindeman plays guitar and banjo, with Bruce Peninsula comrade Misha Bower adding some background vocals. Much of the album is simple and largely unadorned folk that concentrates on the sweet intimacy of Lindeman’s voice and her poetic imagery. Her vocals are reminiscent of an early Joni Michell on “Came So Easy,” or of something you’d hear on an early ’70s album on Asylum. She even splits the record into side one and two, with a short running time (28 minutes). Just when things threaten to become a bit too wispy and ethereal, Romano chimes in with noisier guitar parts to ground things, as on “Know it to See it” and “Nobody.” This ranks alongside Jennifer Castle’s recent album as new folk of the highest order.

http://exclaim.ca/Reviews/FolkAndCountry/weather_station-all_of_it_was_mine

The Toronto Star Reviews The Weather Station’s “All Of It Was Mine” • 17.08.11

Young Canadian songwriter Tamara Lindeman has a magical way of turning down your lights, pulling shut the drapes, pouring you something tall and chilled, lighting some candles, then letting you know that, whatever your cares and tribulations, everything is going to be all right. I guess you could call this shoegazer roots, if there is such a genre. The 10 original songs on her second full-length album is such a perfectly turned gem of whispered emotion that I wished each were much longer. In fact, most of the songs end far too soon. The Weather Station gang adds minimal accompaniment from acoustic strings, a bit of drum and a chord or two on electric guitar. Lindeman’s dusky-sweet vocals are charming, as are Misha Bower’s harmonies.

http://www.toronto.com/article/695408–weather-station-s-pleasant-evenings-and-more

Telescope Media Reviews Dog Day’s “Deformer” • 17.08.11

Deformer inhabits a specific time and place in the lives of its creators. “The art is now just the life,” is how Dog Day put it in press releases.

So the rest of us are left to peer at this from afar. It’s not unlike looking through the muffled tunnel vision that welcomes visitors to the Malkovich portal in Being John Malkovich.

While there may be no way to truly be present with Deformer, it isn’t so far removed that it can’t be admired from a distance. That admiration won’t come quickly, of course; Nancy Urich and Seth Smith aren’t in the business of making instantly-agreeable albums, and Deformer’s rough-around-the-edges exterior advances that trend. Murk like this isn’t a widespread commodity.

There’s a lot to be excavated from under the surface, though—as idiosyncratic as it may be—and the bits that unearth most easily share much in common with Chad VanGaalen’s Diaper Island and Sebadoh’s more eccentric offerings. There’s some Quasi in this, too. Aside from the sludgy guitars, Urich (who just recently took up the drums) is already exhibiting a few of the hallmarks that make Janet Weiss so recognizable behind the kit.

Deformer is a heavy-handed disc, yes, but it isn’t oppressive. Urich’s vocal contributions and a few of the most memorable riffs since Matador’s heydays (see: “Part Girl” and “I Wanna Mix”) deliver timely doses of levity every two or three songs.

In heavy rotation ’round my house, for the foreseeable future.

http://telescopemedia.com/2011/08/02/dog-day-deformer/

The Weather Station Featured In The Orangeville Banner • 17.08.11

A different direction may be the path to success for Tamara Lindeman.

Growing up near Shelburne, Lindeman refused to play an acoustic guitar at the start of her music career.

“I thought it was totally cheesy to be a girl, play an acoustic guitar and sing sensitive songs,” Lindeman said. “I thought there was nothing worse I could do.”

She opted to make music on her computer and play with a band.

“I had done that for so long, it seemed rebellious to me to pick up a guitar and write a song that I could sing in front of my grandmother,” Lindeman said.

By picking up an acoustic guitar, Lindeman has defeated any cliché she feared associated with female folk singers. Her latest album, All of it Was Mine, released under the band name The Weather Station, has earned praise from various music publications and national newspapers. The CD hits stores on Aug. 16.

“I take pleasure in writing music that speaks so simply to people,” Lindeman said.

Lindeman welcome’s the praise, but said it doesn’t fuel her ambition to perform.

“It’s so crazy, I still get a thrill when anyone buys the record, or even wants to listen to it,” she said. “You would do it no matter whether or not anyone was listening.”

The album’s approach is a different direction on all levels compared to The Weather Station’s first release, The Line.

“My first album is sort of dark and very produced and abstract,” Lindeman said. “I made it alone over the course of four years. This record, I made over the course of four days.”

All of it Was Mine was produced by City and Colour’s Daniel Romano on his You’ve Changed Records label — a collaboration with The Constantine’s Steve Lambke. Lindeman was working on an “ambitious project” in a studio before she realized her chemistry with Romano.

“The moment we started playing together, I realized the key thing to capture was the chemistry and strength of playing together,” Lindeman said. “I chose performance over perfectly recorded everything.”

Romano and Lindeman recorded the album using a pair of ribbon microphones and a digital eight-track at the producer’s home studio in Welland, Ontario.

“Recording on a eight-track is ridiculous these days,” Lindeman said. “But it captures a lot of spontaneity and small mistakes and the stuff that brings life to a performance.”

Romano compared recording the album with Lindeman to what it would have been like to produce the opposite of John Cage’s “4’33” — a controversial composition based on ambient noise often referred to as four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence.
“Only music. No environment. Any breeze or creek are crushed or muted or gone over, leaving only room for music and voice,” Romano said in an email to The Banner. “Her talent is immense, as is the relief of the furnace to your feet. In the end, she let me overdub the creaking of a chair.”

Joining You’ve Changed Records is a personal accomplishment for Lindeman.

“Everything they put out, I wanted to hear and to be on that label, as small and humble as it is, means a great deal,” Lindeman said.

Lindeman said her style fits with the flavour of the label’s artists; adding label recognition may help promote her album within the indie music circuit.

“Sometimes that makes you want to buy the album even if you don’t know the artist,” she said.

Lindeman describes her new album as telling a sad story through humble sounds, with lyrics too personal to reveal the meaning.

“I think that it’s a record describing a shift, a change,” Lindeman said.

Although the album carries a sense of sadness, Lindeman was heavily influenced by nature while writing the songs.

“I found myself constantly writing about edible plants and wild plants that grew in the city in the cracks of sidewalks or abandoned lots,” Lindeman said.

The artist left Dufferin County for Toronto about eight years ago to pursue her music career. Her influence by nature is an attempt to find part of Dufferin County in the city.

“Dufferin is beautiful. The natural world seeps into you in a way you may not notice until you leave,” Lindeman said. “I think it has influenced me more than anything else in life.”

Dufferin County’s inspiration was clear on The Weather Station’s first album, through the song titled Amaranth.

“When I was first making music, I would try and score landscapes,” she said. “There is something with the flatness of Amaranth and the fields and the swamps that came through in that song.”

http://www.orangeville.com/what%27s%20on/article/1055316–the-weather-station-s-new-forecast-out-next-week

The Torontoist Reviews The Weather Station’s “All Of It Was Mine” • 17.08.11

Two years after local singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman shocked us into feeling with The Line, the stark debut of her project the Weather Station, she returns with an album that isn’t as instantly devastating—but it’s just as moving. It turns out that’s the most immediate thing about this, and so far, all Weather Station releases: Lindeman possesses something special, something never quite tangible, something quite gentle, in fact, and you can hear it in her music loud and clear.

For All Of It Was Mine, out next week, Lindeman started and stopped the songs until eventually taking them to Welland, Ontario, to record with Daniel Romano (Attack in Black, Daniel, Fred & Julie). It’s a fitting pairing, as Romano himself is one of the best modern Canadian folk torchbearers, with his mind set deep in our country’s roots music past and both feet firmly in the present. She would also eventually release the new album on his label, You’ve Changed Records, adding another stellar release to their roster while giving the record a home in which it’ll no doubt thrive. If on the last album Lindeman was wounded, on this one she’s scarred—on “Came So Easy” she sings, “So sure I was needless,” and it’s a little bit pointed and a little bit vulnerable.

Lindeman’s at her best there and on opener “Everything I Saw,” if for no other reason than the faster arrangements. Some of the second half of the album does fade a bit, but on “Traveler” and the more fleshed out “Know It To See It,” she’s evoking Joni Mitchell even more than she did the last time out, looping her way around the words with a more forthright confidence. This release offsets her gentler musings and shows once again that the well of her talents runs very deep, and currently, also very full.

http://torontoist.com/2011/08/sound_advice_all_of_it_was_mine_by_the_weather_station.php

The Weather Station on Southern Souls • 16.08.11

The Weather Station’s All of it Was Mine is out today on You’ve Changed Records. You can check out Tamara performing all the album’s songs on Southern Souls.

THE WEATHER STATION Album Preview (10 Songs) from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.

Yup • 04.08.11