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The record was called Loyalty from the beginning-it was the first decision I made about it. It's a word you usually see written in copperplate script, a virtue: LOYALTY. But the songs don't treat it that way, just as a thing to unpack. It's a force that you have to reckon with: loyalty to the dream, to the "work," to the mythical idea of "you" that somebody thought they saw. It can be a weakness as much as a strength; it can keep you from the reality of your own life, your own self.

- Tamara Lindeman

In excess virtue lies danger, or at least limits to pragmatic action-it's a lesson hard learned by anyone disillusioned by the erosion of youthful mythologies. Strict fealty to a fixed ideal of identity doesn't do us any favors as adults. Loyalty, the third and finest album yet by The Weather Station (and the first for Paradise of Bachelors) wrestles with these knotty notions of faithfulness/faithlessness-to our idealism, our constructs of character, our memories, and to our family, friends, and lovers-representing a bold step forward into new sonic and psychological inscapes. It's a natural progression for Toronto artist Tamara Lindeman's acclaimed songwriting practice. Recorded at La Frette Studios just outside Paris in the winter of 2014, in close collaboration with Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and Robbie Lackritz (Feist), the record crystallizes her lapidary songcraft into eleven emotionally charged vignettes and intimate portraits, redolent of fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and David Wiffen, but utterly her own.

A stunningly beautiful thing. Lindeman's voice has acquired a new depth, a smoky, distant, intriguing quality, while both musically and lyrically this is an intricately constructed piece, exacted with a cool gaze and sensuality reminiscent of Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen.

- Laura Barton, The Guardian

Loyalty is imbued with the crisp intimacy of the coldest season, the allure of the city of lights. Lindeman's voice floats by in the higher registers of head voice, never breathy but, instead, misty and amorphous. Lindeman's songwriting catches your attention and holds it. She's clever without any smugness, rendering every day events into existential pictures of uncertainty, poking and prodding at subconscious desires without ever fully exposing them.

- Caitlin White, Stereogum

Timeless. Recalls the vignettes of another Canadian folk divinity [Joni Mitchell.] But the measured, perceptive storytelling at hand is purely Lindeman's, singular in both its quiet clarity and compelling relatability.

- Eric Torres, Pitchfork