Weyes Blood
(Picture: Neil Krug)Never mind the spooky stage name, and the fact that Natalie Mering used to perform in a noise rock band called Satanized. The Californian singer-songwriter’s fifth album as Weyes Blood sees her perfecting a soft, lustrous sound that couldn’t be more welcoming.
Her last release, Titanic Rising, proved to be her breakthrough, ending up on most of the lists of the best albums of 2019. She was last heard singing with Lana Del Rey on a Joni Mitchell cover, which gives some idea of the sumptuous, Laurel Canyon-feel of her own piano-led music. Past collaborations with Perfume Genius and Father John Misty also confirm that she’s in that pair’s ballpark, crafting elaborate ballads that are rich in their orchestration.
Titanic Rising had a slightly colder feel to this one, making her latest an even better entry point for newcomers. They’re meant to be the first two albums in a trilogy. She has explained that the first one was about “feelings of impending doom” and the next one will be about hope, while here we are “literally in the thick of it.”
If this is what doom feels like, sign me up. The opening song, It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody, includes a bleak reference to the pandemic (“Living in the wake of overwhelming changes/We’ve all become strangers, even to ourselves”) and the first of a few disapproving nods to the terrible reign of the smartphone. But the music is bliss, with glistening harp runs, stately piano chords and gorgeous strings forming a silky bed for Mering’s pillowy voice. Children of the Empire, too, tempers lines about loneliness and “so much blood on our hands” with a swinging rhythm, chiming bells and merry finger clicks.
Many of the 10 songs hover around the five or six minute mark, ebbing and flowing at an unhurried pace as the musical layers unfurl. God Turn Me Into a Flower, a new take on the myth of Narcissus, moves at the pace of plant growth, adding wordless backing vocals to organ drones and eventually filling the ears with tropical bird song.
There’s a more modern feel to Twin Flame, with its hissing electronic beats and spidery guitars. By the time we get to the energetic strum of The Worst is Done, it sounds like she might have found some optimism, but no: “I think it’s only just begun,” she sings. Even so, her wonderful voice, and this stunning sound, can’t help but provide plenty of comfort.
