Natalie Mering, aka Weyes Blood, loves the movies. I know this because her latest album, Titanic Rising, has a song called “Movies” on it where she sings “I love the movies.” I also know this because the album’s sound has that high-definition, cinematic quality with opulent string arrangements and lyrics that portray her as a character looking for meaning in life in these heightened, unreal times. At the end of the song, she declares she wants to be her own movie, capturing how the weirdness of our current existence has caused people to experience it almost out-of-body, as the hero in the story of their life that is playing concurrently with everyone else’s.
In 2019, the movie we’re all starring in is a disaster movie like (wait for it) Titanic, except the script isn’t nearly as tight as James Cameron’s masterpiece. Also, the characters in this movie all know the ship is going to sink but can’t actually do anything about it. So instead of being a massively dramatic, entertaining spectacle, it’s often just boring (like the pre-iceberg parts), and Mering gets that, too. “Something to Believe” portrays the relatable desire to get out of her own head and experience an escape from the reality none of us have any control over: “Give me something I can see; something bigger and louder than the voices in me.”
Titanic Rising feels like an attempt at crafting that escape herself, and it’s in a similar space as some other albums I’ve loved in the past couple years like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s The Kid, Björk’s Utopia and Julia Holter’s Aviary, which all responded to the current climate of senseless ugliness with thoughtful, sometimes excessive beauty. The sound on this album is gorgeous throughout with psychedelic synths and strings along with smooth production. It’s bolstered even more by Mering’s voice, which has a rich throwback quality that is reminiscent of Judy Garland and Patsy Cline, with a bit of Joni Mitchell and Aimee Mann tossed in. It’s easy on the ears, but the themes she is grappling with are complex and difficult.
Before I even listened to this album, I knew it was dealing with climate change and was worried it was going to be a bunch of on-the-nose songs about glaciers melting. Instead, outside of the occasional lyrical reference, it’s a subject that looms over the music, much like it does in our day-to-day lives where we go about our mundane business and then occasionally remember “oh yeah, we’re all gonna die.” Mering captures a lot of relatable anxieties and stresses in this album, showing she has that rare gift of making her own observations feel universal. And despite occasionally gloomy material, the sound of Titanic Rising on songs like the jaunty “Everything” and theatrical opener “A Lot’s Gonna Change” conveys a sense of warmth and optimism, even with disaster hanging overhead. I guess the one upside of the planet being destroyed is that it’s inspiring albums that sound like this.
The Noise Made By People 