Natalie Laura Mering is in her element. “Do you want to see a completely insane clip?” She asked meaningfully via Twitter in early October. Including a video teaser of their single “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Every Body” from Weyes Blood’s fifth album, that’s their stage name.
In the video you can see her in a musical sailor outfit and hear her warm mezzo-soprano for a few seconds: “Oh, it’s been so long since I felt really known. Fragile in the morning. Can’t hold on too much of any thing.” Typography fans will recognize the Disney Group’s old signature font in the flying-in text elements. A little special gag that might mean something. Because Weyes Blood is always told on several levels.
Their songs are epic movie tracks. But they usually also work with a guitar on the bar stool. Weyes Blood is a conceptual artist and singer-songwriter in one person. One who, in contrast to Lana Del Rey, for example, has mastered various instruments and pre-produced her tracks “89 percent” by home recording before finally going into the studio with her West Coast buddies for the final mix.
“If we get bogged down there, which happens occasionally, I throw everyone out and then finish it on my own,” she says. Weyes Blood is an “independent woman” straight out of a picture book, attentive, quick, humorous and interested in many things. She’s fun to talk to, and she smiles away silly questions with a Mona Lisa smile.
When it comes to Ray Davies, on the other hand, the 34-year-old becomes a profound connoisseur of the 1960s, as can also be admired in the Arte documentary “The Kinks – The Bad Boys of Rock ‘n’ Roll”. “I knew the band from my parents’ record collection and found the combination of genius and failure very inspiring,” says Mering.
She now does PR appointments across Europe as Weyes Blood. Without the large train station of a major corporation. She has remained loyal to the Seattle warhorses from Nirvana’s grunge label Sub Pop and appreciates their calm consistency. “I’m in no hurry with a commercial career. It’s nice to have enough money to not have to sleep on the band bus. But the rest is smoke and mirrors.”
Compare with Joni Mitchell
For the previous album, “Titanic Rising”, the well-connected Hollywood girl sank an indoor film set in a pool to create an impressive underwater shoot. In the video for the song “Everyday” she processed the butcher horror films of the 80s. The director was – of course – Natalie Mering herself. Weyes Blood concerts can get 1500 fans; in New Zealand for example. Her unique (concept) music has taken her around the world, on a long upward career path since she played bass with the band Jackie-O Motherfucker after college in Portland, Oregon. She can also play keyboards.
To date, Mering has taken two decades to become a star. In the US, Weyes Blood has been compared to Joni Mitchell for their artistic precision, but even more so for their ability to weave personal stories, politics and universal themes into popular music. Her new album shows her as a painting of the Pre-Raphaelite school, which in England in the mid-19th century transformed the Italian Renaissance into pathetic gothic bombast. The perfect reminiscence for their new album, born out of the loneliness of the pandemic, “And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow”, which comes along melancholy and then experiences a double twist in the great “The Worst Is Done”.
“Yes, the polyphonic surf harmonies alone make this song out of the ordinary. But did you pay attention to the text? The worst is over, we are told. But it could also get worse, right?” There’s no musician who uses pop to reflect the strange state of the world better than Weyes Blood – and can translate it all into coherent, emotionally functioning songs.