An Interview with Weyes Blood

“Expressing things through song is a great way to get to people who want a more poetic version of what’s going on versus just reading the news, which will kill your soul. Sometimes it’s good to have a little bit of a poetic spin on the whole thing, and then you feel more empowered to do something about it.”

Natalie Mering’s Nautical Canon:
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Titanic (1997)
Hook (1991)
Mermaids (1990)
Splash (1984)

Certain records have the ability to tap into the collective psyche like an emotional divining rod. Titanic Rising, the fourth album from Natalie Mering’s project Weyes Blood, surges with big sounds and big feelings—symphonic strings and synths swell beneath sentimental melodies, in a return to the golden age of songwriting. It also brings to mind another set of golden records—the twin phonographs that were sent into space aboard NASA’s two Voyager spacecrafts under the guidance of Carl Sagan, an intergalactic time capsule designed to represent life on earth to anyone or anything out there that might encounter it. Like Sagan’s sonic “bottle” that was launched into the “cosmic ‘ocean’” in 1977, Titanic Rising captures something of what it feels like to be alive on earth in the present, and its mission is also one of hope.

While Mering’s previous album, Front Row Seat To Earth, was also interested in apocalypse and articulated the anxiety of the present moment (“Now what a great future this is gonna be,” she sang on the track “Generation Why,” and it sounded like an elegy), her latest offering is an earnest desire to make peace with change and find an anchor of meaning amongst the rising tides. If the world is a sinking ship, Natalie Mering is going down singing.

Born in California and raised as the daughter of musician parents who were also deeply religious, Mering has been writing, recording and performing under different variations of the name Weyes Blood since the age of fifteen. In conversation, as in her body of work, she is not afraid to get deep about the age we live in—how the shifts in technology and the constant threat of ecological collapse have changed the way we love, and what we believe in. We met in person ahead of her show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg and spoke about 90s childhood nostalgia, millennial burn out, and why modern dating has the energy of a slasher movie. In other words, we were talking about our generation.

—Madelaine Lucas

I. Dream Geographies

THE BELIEVER: The new record is called Titanic Rising. I wanted...