Songs Decade
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Sink or swim time: Weyes Blood, aka Natalie Mering, poses for the cover of this SONGS year’s Titanic Rising. Of The DECADE Natalie Mering escaped a claustrophobic religious upbringing to reinvent herself as Titanic-obsessed vintage-pop classicist Weyes Blood. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx But battles with her old label and “the hubris of mankind” mean it’s a daily battle to stay afloat. Eve Barlow submerges herself in Mering’s world. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 76 JANUARY 2019 JANUARY 2019 77 WEYES BLOOD In the pink: things were looking gigantic fable for the hubris of man. uncertain until Mering’s It’s about the third class of the world breakthrough fourth album, “There are dark getting fucked,” she says, growing outraged. Titanic Rising (below). “That’s what’s going on now. Instead of Twitter alt-right t the crashing into an iceberg and sinking a ship mouths of Los Angeles’ hiking trails we are melting the icebergs and sinking third weirdos commenting everyoneA is uniformly dressed in sweats, world civilisations. Nobody took that baseball caps and sunglasses. It means you message home. They took home Leo and on my shit. Why are have to identify people by their dogs. Luigi is James Cameron. They didn’t take the a Pomeranian rescue. He has a permanently moral of the story.” sunny disposition and loves nature. “He Climate change is a focal point for Mering you following me? was abandoned in a park,” says his master, who sings about “a million people burning”. Natalie Mering, aka experimental rock Her concerns are connected to her fears Really spooky artist Weyes Blood. “He was in bad shape. about loss of community. As we become He’s the Luigi to my Mario. I don’t know more self-consumed, she argues, it’s harder people out there.” where he comes from, you know?” to save the planet. “There was a time when Mering is also a little unsure of where individualism wasn’t so rampant,” she says, going to be raptured. We’ll go to heaven.” she comes from. Her accent sounds like it pointing to PSAs about She doesn’t begrudge her family religion, belongs to another American era. She’s spent global warming from the but Mering always rebelled. In Pennsylvania, 31 years trying to find a place to fit and looks ’50s as evidence that she became “weirder”; a fish out of water. to have found it in LA, as she takes a seat in we’ve been here before. “Philly was very segregated: Donald Trump! her local Griffith Park obscured by a pair of “In 1912 there’s talk North-Eastern racists! I grew up in a very Gucci sunnies, and a hat from her own about ice caps melting. Wasp-y zone. There were two black students merch line (it reads: BAD MAGIC). Her It wasn’t scoffed upon as in my school. Me and my family were experience recording her fourth album, liberal bullshit. It was probably depressed.” Her way out of that Titanic Rising, makes a virtue of connections respected as science. was turning to guitar and her enchanting she’s forged since returning to California. People had faith in woodland surroundings. Her father and It’s the sound of a lifer songwriter who institutions.” It’s trickier brothers played Christian rock. Her dad’s finally snatched the resources to match for people to band new wave band was called Sumner. That her ambition. Despite its career-best together now. It’s not that wasn’t Mering’s path. She liked dissonance. success, she’s never settled. This oasis of we’re more selfish. Rather “I wasn’t trying to sound like Joni foliage and wildlife is her hideaway. “If it we’re more alone. “The paradigm has Mitchell,” she smirks. “I liked hardcore, weren’t for music,” she says, “I’d live out in shifted,” says Mering. “People’s time noise, deconstructionist rock’n’roll. Let’s the middle of nowhere.” is an isolated chaos.” fucking tear it apart.” The Pennsylvanian To be in Mering’s company is to ponder The internet compounds that. Mering attitude was to squash ambition in the arts. about God, the universe and life itself. She’s likens social media to a job that capitalism There were bands but nobody let Mering in. accessibly intellectual and sceptical of has pushed onto us. “If you wanna date “I couldn’t find people that shared my internet culture, particularly given the somebody you have to have an arsenal of flame.” Her best friend used to strum Beatles climate denier white supremacists that pop pictures,” she says. “You have to send songs with her, but as Mering was taking the up in her DMs. “The internet is spooky,” fucking nudes.” Mering does not send nudes. train to New York City to punk shows, her she says. “There are dark Twitter alt-right “It comes naturally to some, but if you’re friend chickened out. At home, her parents weirdos commenting on my shit. Why are from a generation that remembers a time thought her music was evil. “Any parent you following me? I don’t do YouTube. before, it’s isolating. It’s draining.” would when that shit comes out a stereo.” Really spooky people out there.” She denounced God. “I was very angry. So Titanic Rising assesses all of this, and orn in 1988, angry!” At her most extreme Mering decided pines for a deeper human connection. Mering is during puberty that she would never watch a It’s nostalgic for the way things were of the last movie again. It lasted three years. “I thought pre-internet. Without context you may generation we’d all been brainwashed: this is garbage, assume it was made in the early 1970s. to recall what fuck the world! I was passionately bummed.” Its references are closer to Skeeter Davis it was like Mulholland Drive was cool enough to or Burt Bacharach than the bands Mering growing up eventually break the strike. “My mom once shares a label with on Sub Pop. Described as without the literally tied me to a chair to watch The “Bob Seeger meets Enya”, at one point it web. She spent her earliest years in the Notebook.” She starts screaming, likening attests: “true love is making a comeback.” B Bay Area before relocating to Doylestown, her reaction to The Exorcist. “‘Get this Her cooed vocal is familiarly conservative Pennsylvania – the polar opposite fucking piece of shit outta my face, I hate it!’ and contrarian because of it. The artwork environment – after her parents became I still hate it. Garbage. Fucking emotional features Mering submerged underwater. The “very” Christian. “It was traumatic,” she manipulation of the wing-wang. Go and idea of raising the Titanic reflects a desire to says. “I had a California childhood. I was a disappoint a whole generation of women, excavate the past; to take a closer look at beach child. My parents are Californian. My why don’t ya?” what’s long buried, to get away from the grandparents, too. The demeanour was so At the age of 15, she channelled her rage barrage of stimuli clouding our judgement. different from Pennsylvania.” Mering’s xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx into a project she named (and spelled) Wise It’s named after the 1997 blockbuster family were “Reagan-y”. Hence being raised Blood, after the Flannery O’Connor novel (Mering was nine when it was released). with the rhetoric of ‘the good old days’ (“a book about a church of Christ without “That movie was engineered for little white and a scepticism that humans could have Jesus Christ!”). Sonically she was inspired by girls,” she says now, despairingly. It wasn’t any impact on the planet. “My parents the ’60s and its revolutionary spirit. “I didn’t Leonardo DiCaprio who swept Mering off believed that this is already a fallen space,” wanna rehash what had already been done,” her feet but the tale’s morality. “It was a explains Mering. “If this goes to shit we’re xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx she recalls. “The ’90s hippies were listening 78 DECEMBER 2019 DECEMBER 2019 79 WEYES BLOOD Titanic Rising: who was aboard I wanted to do it with Chris Cohen. Mexican Summer All white on the night: supported that notion. It gave Weyes Blood plays Weyes Blood’s fourth album me the support I needed to Roskilde Festival, get out there and not just to Denmark, 5 July, 2019. 1. Jonathan Rado, Rado is pure fun. He takes it to write and work with show up and hope it works producer [Whitney, seriously but doesn’t need to Brian and Michael on out. I had a job to do – record Father John Misty], be like, ‘OK, guys, let me do Everyday. Michael’s on drums, with Chris. It felt like a Foxygen frontman my work, I wrote 5 per cent Brian’s on bass. It was a blast. homecoming. As soon as I “When we first met up of an Adele song.’” They immediately got it.” came back all the trauma from we made a demo of my East Coast experiences Andromeda together and 2. The Lemon Twigs’ 3. Blake Mills, producer kinda melted away. All the I knew immediately. He was Brian and Michael [Alabama Shakes, Fiona friends I made who grew up like a best friend. I felt like D’Addario Apple, Laura Marling] here I immediately felt so a teenager, we just got each “I was such a huge fan of what “I was so grateful that Blake close to. These are my other, we both have an they’re doing.