Tamara Lindeman – the Toronto-based songstress who records as The Weather Station – drew inevitable comparisons to Joni Mitchell on breakout third album ‘Loyalty’ in 2015. Full of charming folk-pop and an enigmatic, soulful delivery, it was a perfection of what she’d done so far: but this year’s self-titled record is a bold step forward, rockier, weirder, stronger; now fully self-produced, and with a country-rock powerhouse band enabling her to hit her new electric phase with power and prowess. “Scrupulously truthful”, as she puts it, her songs stare in the face of life’s difficulties, and turn them into desolately beautiful paeans of longing. Lead single ‘Thirty’ is the perfect package: wry and self-aware, simmering with the tensions of Lindeman’s current life, confidently masterful of her orchestral folk sound.

Wed 31 Jan, 7.30pm at Hare and Hounds, High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham B14 7JZ, £8.80 seetickets.com