hypersongs

Weyes Blood

Natalie Mering's chamber-pop project, which grew from noise and folk records in the 2000s into the orchestral soft rock of Titanic Rising (2019), the first part of a trilogy.

Wise Blood, Weyes Bluhd, Weyes Blood

Natalie Mering was born in Santa Monica in 1988 and raised mainly in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in a family of musicians. She began recording at fifteen under the name Wise Blood, after Flannery O'Connor's novel, then Weyes Bluhd, and settled on Weyes Blood. After a year at Lewis & Clark College in Portland she dropped out, played bass in Jackie-O Motherfucker and sang and played keyboards in the noise band Satanized, and self-released Strange Chalices of Seeing in 2007. The Outside Room (2011, Not Not Fun) was credited to Weyes Blood and the Dark Juices.

The Innocents, on Mexican Summer on October 21, 2014, was recorded in rural Pennsylvania, in Mering's apartment and at Gary's Electric Studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and she has said it concerns her first real relationship that went badly wrong. Front Row Seat to Earth followed on October 21, 2016, produced by Mering and Chris Cohen, with Meg Duffy on slide guitar; the Guardian's Michael Hann called it beautiful, unsettling and wholly compelling. Her influences, as she has named them, include church music, Harry Nilsson, Joni Mitchell, Nico, Judee Sill and Scott Walker.

Titanic Rising and after

Titanic Rising came out on Sub Pop on April 5, 2019 and put her in front of a much larger audience: Metacritic scored it 91 from 26 reviews, AllMusic made it its album of the year, Paste and NME ranked it first and ninth for 2019 respectively and it won best indie rock album at the 2020 Libera Awards. She appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and opened for Kacey Musgraves that year, and in 2020 she sang on all twelve tracks of Tim Heidecker's Fear of Death.

And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Sub Pop, November 18, 2022), the second part of the trilogy that began with Titanic Rising, was recorded at EastWest Studios in Los Angeles with Jonathan Rado, with Mary Lattimore on harp, Joey Waronker on drums and Daniel Lopatin on synthesizer; it reached number 27 in the UK and was Spin's album of the year. In 2023 she played Coachella, Glastonbury's Park Stage and Fuji Rock and supported Beck and Phoenix. A concert at the Royal Albert Hall with the Jules Buckley Orchestra is listed for September 8, 2026.

Albums

  • Titanic Rising 2019 · Sub Pop

    The fourth Weyes Blood album and her first on Sub Pop: ten songs about loss, memory and a world going under.

Songs

  • Movies Titanic Rising · 2019

    Track six of Titanic Rising, the album's third single, about a teenager who stopped believing in films.

  • Picture Me Better Titanic Rising · 2019

    Track nine of Titanic Rising, written for a friend Mering lost while she was making the album.

Sources

  1. Weyes Blood, Wikipedia
  2. Titanic Rising, Wikipedia
  3. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, Wikipedia
  4. Weyes Blood on Titanic Rising, Dazed (2019-04-22)