Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising is one of the Best Albums of 2019. The closing track of Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising also cites “Nearer, My God” in both name and mournful strings, but where the album vastly succeeds as a doomsday document is in its coverage of the joy, panic, resigned apathy, and beauty that comes with being alive as our planet is so obviously dying.
Natalie Mering’s previous three records as Weyes Blood drew from Laurel Canyon’s surrealist lineage to make psych folk that felt loosely tethered to earth, but Mering finds otherworldliness in straightforwardness on Titanic. Opener “A Lot’s Gonna Change” swells into a cinematic elegy to climate stability and youthful optimism, but one song later, Mering’s in interstellar love on the Flying Burrito Brothers–tinged space opera “Andromeda.” There’s no shortage of attentional leaps on Titanic Rising, whether Mering’s launching a musical-worthy inquiry into dependable love (“Everyday”), writing letters to dead friends (“Picture Me Better”), or disappearing into her favourite movies (fittingly, on “Movies”).
“Everyone knows you just did what you had to,” Mering reassures on “Wild Time,” its title an emotionally depleted answer to being alive amidst climate changes. It might as well serve as a quasi-pull quote for Titanic, an album that spans galaxies to consider whether it’s possible to give undivided attention to both our planet and our emotional sanity. Mering never really finds an answer to that question, but her record is all the more relatable for lack of one.
Weyes Blood made her TV debut on Late Night with Seth Meyers performing “Everyday” from Titanic Rising – which has been universally acclaimed and you can watch the July 16th performance right here
Weyes Blood’s “Something to Believe Tour” .
