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Best of Last Year: Titanic Rising - Weyes Blood

The latest album from multi instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, Natalie Mering, AKA Weyes Blood, is a multifaceted, sometimes moving, venture into the world of baroque-esque chamber pop songwriting.

By Ben SilverPublished 4 years ago 2 min read
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Artwork for Titanic Rising, photographed by Brett Stanley

Many artists seem to be incredibly invested in lyrical content nowadays, almost to the point where the musicality seems to falter because of that. Weyes Blood is a perfect example of someone who seems to hold musicality over lyrics, which, in the case of this album, is actually a good thing.

Weyes Blood is the moniker of Natalie Mering, a singer-songwriter who got her start in more experimental music. That does not mean that this album isn’t experimental, it is, just in it’s own way.

While her other albums have been more overtly experimental, Titanic Rising shows that experimentation can be done without sparing great melodies and chord progressions. Natalie Mering seems to have a niche for unusual, long phrases in her chord progressions, but she never abuses it to the point where it sounds like an early Genesis song.

With Titanic Rising, we see Mering dive right into the unusual, baroque-esque genre of chamber pop music. With vocals influenced by the likes of Joni Mitchell and chord progressions influenced by the likes of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, Natalie Mering uses her strong songwriting sensibilities to wonderfully paint a multifaceted album filled with intelligent melodies and interestingly structured songs.

The album opener, A Lot’s Gonna Change, which probably is the best song on the album, features a very unusual chord progression. She builds on this progression by adding on new melodies to it and changing specific chords to weave it into the next parts of the song. This may sound like textbook to some reading this, but the way that Mering does it is almost...magical. She never really reaches a full fledged chorus on the song, which almost makes the song into its own sort of ballad.

This is a common theme on the album. Mering usually has a chorus to her songs, but rarely do they feel like a chorus. The songs are never really catchy, in the sense that they get stuck in your head, but they get stuck in your subconscious. All of a sudden you find yourself wanting to hear it over and over again, but it never really gets stale. There is so much going on in these songs that you never really fully grasp what Mering is trying to make you feel. It’s that confusion, almost, that makes the album that much more mysterious and presentable.

While the album is mostly a chamber pop album, it uses a lot of interesting synths and sounds, blending them together to present only an idea of what chamber pop music is. Chamber pop is not what instruments you’re playing, it’s the way you write the songs. Mering balances folk, electronic music and progressive pop all on top of the original plate of chamber pop.

The album, with all its genres balanced on top of one another, never feels like a cluster of all these different ideas. They all blend beautifully, especially on the song, Movies, where an arpeggiated synth plays these dramatic chords while Mering sings, almost in a melancholy sense, about movies. It almost sounds a bit over dramatic, but it never feels that way when listening to it.

Mering always keeps the same original idea in all of her songs, to create melodies, chord progressions, and soundscapes that keep things experimental without being overt about it. Mering has mastered her craft on this album and keeps the listener invested and interested with the start of every new song.

Score: 9.5/10

Standout Tracks: A Lot’s Gonna Change, Andromeda, Wild Time, Movies, Something To Believe

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About the Creator

Ben Silver

I write mainly about music and film. I love arts and music in general.

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