Weyes Blood: And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Sub Pop)
Natalie Mering’s follow-up to the superb Titanic Rising sets 21st-century pessimism to one fantastic tune after another – and gently suggests this all may be deadpan humour

The last time the world heard from singer-songwriter Natalie Mering it was 2019, and Titanic Rising, her fourth album under the name Weyes Blood, was quite rightly being hailed as one of the year’s best. Titanic Rising’s sound was rich and very evocative of early 70s California. Its songs, however, were very much a product of the 21st century, marked by an pervading sense of imminent catastrophe, fuelled by an index of millennial worries that stretched from online dating to late capitalism and environmental collapse.

Not unexpectedly, the intervening three years haven’t done a lot to improve Mering’s mood. By her own account, she was not one of those people who found the Covid pandemic an unexpected but ultimately welcome reset, a chance to pause and breathe and take stock. “Has a time ever been more revealing that people are hurting,” she asks, rhetorically, on Titanic Rising’s successor, an album on which everything is broken and everyone is failing to connect with everyone else.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/oaDqAhB

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