The Weather Station — Ignorance

Ontario: Top 10 of 2021

by Daniel McIntosh

It’s become absurdly easy to balk at the deluge of climate news. On Ignorance, the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman opens up a new vein of emotional reverence toward the climate crisis. The lyrics are anxious and sincere: “Thinking I should get all this dying off my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines,” she sings on “Atlantic.” Rather than retreating into cynicism, the Weather Station has made an album whose immediacy reminds the listener of what’s at stake.

Bo Burnham’s transcendent comedy special isn’t the only great piece of COVID-adjacent art titled Inside released this year. The indie-rock quintet’s latest opens and closes with the sounds of the 7pm clanging pots and pans that once heralded the essential workers, and many of the tracks find them grappling with introspective thoughts while trapped in a room – being stuck inside one’s own head being an even worse fate than the physical boundaries.