Many people will recognise the feeling of gobsmacked powerlessness so often engendered by current affairs. Not for nothing was “permacrisis” declared the word of the year for 2022. US artist Natalie Mering, who records as Weyes Blood, pronounced as Flannery O’Connor would say it, eyes up environmental collapse, the sinister march of tech into human relationships and the lack of love seemingly endemic among humans and responds by throwing all the beauty she can muster back at them.
It is a great deal of loveliness. Her voice is one for the ages, a real-deal instrument that taps into classic American timbres: Karen Carpenter or the folk sirens of the 60s-70s cusp. Mering’s vocal default mode is limpid grace, tilting at old timey mellifluousness. She definitely doesn’t want to be inhaling all the dry ice that has been pumped on stage at the start of her set. “No more fog!” she instructs. “It’s apocalyptic enough as it is.”
