When Natalie Mering, who performs beneath the moniker Weyes Blood, got down to observe up her critically acclaimed album Titanic Rising, she wished to make one thing that was “actually upbeat and hopeful; not so doomsday.” The 2019 document delved into the perils of local weather change, the disillusionment with how expertise guidelines over romance and the battle to seek out hope throughout difficult occasions.
However the arrival of the pandemic modified Mering’s focus.
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Whereas Titanic Rising felt like a warning of what might be forward, Mering’s new album, And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (out now on Sub Pop), tackles what occurs when our world crumbles and society has to rebuild itself.
“Every little thing I felt like I talked about and noticed on Titanic Rising got here true and we had been within the thick of it,” says Mering, sitting on the desk in her New York Metropolis lodge room, talking a number of hours earlier than having to fly again to Los Angeles. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, I am unable to be trite and faux that this can be a completely happy time for humanity. I’ve to go deep within the inside and entry a subterranean river of deeper emotions.'”
With the huge success of Titanic Rising, which turned Mering into considered one of indie rock’s greatest singer-songwriters, she wished to be sure that this follow-up would meet the very excessive expectations of followers. “I felt like I could not ship a document that was half-assed, so I spent quite a lot of time refining it. I labored actually laborious to be sure that it was one thing I used to be actually pleased with, and it took a short time,” Mering says.
She started recording And In The Darkness in 2021. However Mering did not need it to be an “in-a-vacuum, pandemic album,” deciding to regroup after experiencing the primary two months of Los Angeles opening up, and penning new songs that additionally captured her advanced feelings as she adjusted to life post-lockdown.
For this LP, Mering reunited with producer Jonathan Rado, who additionally labored on Titanic Rising, and enlisted an all-star roster of musicians, together with Mary Lattimore on harp, Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Level By no means) on synths and Meg Duffy (who performs beneath the title Hand Habits) on guitar. She wished this LP to be simpler to carry out than Titanic Rising, with “deeper sounds and fewer dense, however extra lush.”
And In The Darkness units a wistful tone instantly, opening with hovering strings in “It is Not Simply Me, It is All people,” the place Mering questions if anybody actually is aware of who she is — and if she even is aware of herself.
“[On the LP], there are quite a lot of themes about intimacy on the micro and the macro stage. I do suppose the pandemic in all probability introduced that up for lots of people, particularly individuals round my age who aren’t married but, who simply work rather a lot and have quite a lot of mates. After which unexpectedly if you’re like, ‘OK, you may solely see one pal or one member of the family,’ if you’re actually compelled to reckon with who your pod is, I believe that is when quite a lot of questions come up. You are like, ‘Who am I?'” explains Maring.
When the pandemic hit, Mering discovered herself remoted at residence after touring in assist of Titanic Rising. Used to her life on the street, her house wasn’t a comfy sanctuary. She remembers that earlier than lockdown, her residence barely had decor. “I acquired to get homier and dig into that, cook dinner quite a lot of meals like everyone else did — however I did really feel prefer it was a reckoning,” she displays.
It was a difficult time for Mering, who contracted “OG COVID” and suffered from the long-term results of the virus for 3 months. She notes that although the document’s lyrics had been written in 2020, they nonetheless ring true, as individuals, together with herself, are “fairly cracked from the expertise as a result of it uncovered this concept that the problems we’re going through, [such as] the uncertainty of local weather change and the best way our well being system is structured is admittedly unsustainable.”
[Photo by Neelam Khan Vela]
On a private stage, Mering additionally skilled the dissolution of a relationship in the course of the top of the pandemic. That breakup impressed “Grapevine,” which she describes as an “existential love tune” the place she processes letting go of a poisonous dynamic that now not serves her.
“He was anyone who was fairly broken and had quite a lot of wounds that he would challenge onto me and vice versa,” says Mering, reflecting on the connection. The tune’s title references California’s Interstate 5, a drive that the musician and her former accomplice would typically take collectively. “I believed that was form of cool: We had been driving on the grapevine freeway, after which the idea of the grapevine being this vine to your wound map of each previous relationship tends to come back up in a brand new one, otherwise you simply are inclined to repeat the identical sample time and again,” she notes.
The central theme of And In The Darkness is disillusionment. Not simply in relationships, however in going through the unknown, extra misplaced than ever. Mering notes that whereas writing the document, she was processing her feelings, whereas in panic mode as her world drastically modified.
She remembers that whereas speaking to mates, they might additionally categorical how tough the lockdown interval was for them, making her notice that this sense of hopelessness was common. “I felt like we would have liked to speak about what should be blamed for that existential dread — if it was isolation, if it was local weather uncertainty, if it was simply the construction of our society changing into actually tedious and exhausting,” she says.
Even nonetheless, after diving into these questions and popping out of the hardest occasions, Mering is conserving an optimistic outlook. “This document was figuring out the nuances,” she says. “The following one [will] hopefully be extra about options and a futuristic type of hope and transcendence from the gridlocked modernity battle of being on this technological frontier and having no alternative.” Very like the title of the LP, Mering is striving to seek out the glowing hope within the darkness.
