In her senior album, Titanic Rising, Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering plays the role of an architect. She has designed and constructed an auditory environment that allows the listener to experience life on the very bottom of an ocean. The only catch is that the aforementioned ocean is under the surface of the moon and that moon is orbiting Saturn.
Weyes Blood’s new album exudes an incredible depth of sound combined with technicalities that make each song so charismatic and completely in a realm of their own. In short; it’s damn cool. The opening lyrics from the album’s first track, “A Lot’s Gonna Change” immediately set the mood.
If I could go back to a time before now, before I ever felt down. Go back to a time when I was just a girl- when I had the whole world gently wrapped around me.
-A Lot’s Gonna Change
A bitter-sweet side effect of growing older is the nostalgia for the simplicity that we used to know, and how age brings on complexities. While we used to be children who saw new things plainly, as adults, our perspectives can become warped by nuances and narratives that have been placed in our heads. Mering addresses this quirk of the modern-day twenty-something immediately which introduces the theme of change and the awkward discomforts that come with it. Essentially, I received this song is a friendly reminder to expect a few unpredictable turns in life.
The flow in the first half of the album is, in a word, dreamy. “Andromeda” highlights the technicality of the album’s dreamy nature really well. It opens with what sounds like a slow-motion laser show guided by her voice, but in an interview with Tim Heidecker in January, Mering revealed how she developed the sound. It was produced by using a synth that was run into two tape reels, so they looped each other, and as it was recorded, she shook to tapes. This created a beautiful soundscape that is the perfect foundation for a space-age track.
Another theme that comes through in this album is the relationship between technology and romance. More specifically, technology’s acute ability to complicate romance. Titanic Rising’s 3rd track, “Everyday” is an upbeat swanky tune that seems to make light of the fleeting nature of intimacy. It’s here- it’s gone. It’s here again- and it’s gone. Mering describes her relationship with her “keeper” as somewhat transactional- always trying to earn their companionship.
And someone sitting silly looked at me and said, “Is this the end of all the love in me?” And I said, “Not too bad then again, you might be right, then again, sleep the night”
-Everyday
Whether it’s a good or bad thing, Mering seems to pay homage to our culture of momentary segmented periods of romance, or hook-up culture in this song. In comparison with the rest of the album, Everyday paints the party-girl that lives in every one of us with endearing light. Love, in this context, is a multivitamin- take one by mouth daily.
The album takes an experimental turn in the title track which sits in the dead center of the setlist, Titanic Rising. A wholly instrumental song in the middle of an album that has a lot to say, this appears to be intentional. In the song Movies, Mering plays with and builds upon sounds to produce a grandiose piece that demands your attention. The first sound you hear is reminiscent of riding a radio wave through outer space. The lyrics address the sound directly:
This is how it feels to be in love. This is life from above.
-Movies
In my opinion, this further develops the theme of a relationship between technology and romance. As romance becomes further publicized through media and entertainment, transmitted by radio waves, the lines of reality on the concept of love become blurred. This can be used to explain the destructive, and often repetitive, patterns people find themselves in. This is an important moment in the album as it takes a not-so-gentle yet profound turn to existentialism.
No one’s ever gonna give you a trophy for all the pain and the things you’ve been through. No one knows but you.
-Mirror Forever
This line is impossible to ignore and intends to hit you in the chest. For me, I believe that Mering is pointing the finger at the person in the mirror, as well as the listener, for being a self-proclaimed victim. She invites the listener to get comfortable with the concept of being an individual person, free and responsible for themselves and their own development. Even the name of the track, Mirror forever, speaks for itself. Regardless of our personal satisfaction with what’s in the mirror, what we see is the hand that we’ve been dealt, and it’s our purpose to find fulfillment for ourselves, because no one has the power to give it.
Following Mirror Forever, the song Wild Time comes as a reprisal. Mering offers appreciation for the good with the bad in a somber tone that playfully bends and plays with sound.
Turn around it’s time for you to slowly let these changes make you more holy and true. Otherwise, it just made it more complicated for nothing. Warm and cold, a place for us too far.
-Wild Time
Again, the theme of change is reiterated in the second verse of this song. Mering asks that you change your perspective on complications and difficulties in life. Before this song, Titanic Rising has made it very clear that change is inevitable. Wild Time is her professional recommendation on how to prepare for it: essentially, open yourself up to it.
Throughout Titanic Rising, Mering’s vocals are delivered with clarity yet fall softly on the listener’s ears. That just seems to be Mering’s wonderful secret in what makes this album so special. The blend of classical music elements with experimental sounds set this album apart from anything that I have listened to recently. Overall, Titanic Rising is a melancholic but hopeful ode to the future. Mering invites us all to be optimistic with a healthy amount of realism because if there’s one certainty in life, it’s uncertainty. The sentiment that this album imparts is that our lives shouldn’t be anchored in the past or paralyzed by what’s to come but hopefully looking to the future. Weyes Blood paints a beautiful picture of this future in the final song, Nearer to Thee, which concludes the album with another instrumental piece- a farewell to the sinking (or rising?) ship. Weyes Blood’s call to action in Titanic Rising speaks loudly, as Mering makes it clear that this wonderful future will not be without a hefty amount of work to come. The ship, whether it’s rising or sinking, is always on the move- and here we are just trying to maintain some bit of decorum throughout the mess.
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