The road that songwriter
Natalie Mering and her shapeshifting project
Weyes Blood walked was a long and twisting route, leading from weird experimental early days to the high-definition grandeur of fourth album
Titanic Rising. Every step of the journey brought
Mering's gifts for songcraft into sharper focus, with 2014's achingly beautiful
The Innocents losing some of its hush with the soft rock lushness of 2016's
Front Row Seat to Earth. That '70s FM radio spirit continues on
Titanic Rising, but is expanded with more daring songwriting, larger than life arrangements, and the crystallization of
Mering's distinctive take on songcraft.
Mering has always been geared toward the big-picture creation of albums more than just writing stand alone tunes. Even her earliest work had a sense of purposeful architecture to the way it flowed between folky dirges and sheets of noise. Here she underscores enormously orchestrated pop songs with eerie experimental ambience, imagining a dreamworld where
Joni Mitchell's late-'70s output was produced by
Brian Eno.
Mitchell's introspective searching is a key reference point for many of these songs, with
Mering's self-harmonizing and bounding melodic approach recalling
Mitchell on many tracks here. Once album-opener "Lot's Gonna Change" moves from a warped few seconds of synthesizer to its understated piano figure, it embodies the vulnerability and struggle found in so much of the Laurel Canyon songwriting set of the '70s. Co-production from
Foxygen member
Jonathan Rado might explain the brightly blooming chamber pop arrangements, merging
Mering's soaring vocals with orchestral strings and drum fills borrowed directly from the
Beatles. This optimistic throwback arrangement is in full force on the infectiously bubbly "Everyday," with lyrics inspecting a confusing relationship over a track as bouncy as a rubber ball.
Mering effortlessly switches gears throughout the album, slipping between the synthy melodrama of "Movies" and the cold coffee blues piano ballad "Something to Believe," as well as making space for acoustic folk numbers, ambient interludes, and chamber pop diversions. Easily her most clear-headed set of songs to date, there's a directness here that sometimes got lost in the layers of earlier albums. She sounds driven and confident, asserting an intense control of the emotional flow of her songs without ever rushing things or letting some of the anxiety she sings about seep into the feel of the album. While all of
Weyes Blood's albums leading up to
Titanic Rising were good, even great, there's something that sets this one apart. Fantastic songs, meticulously detailed production, and a certain, hard-to-name spark of connection all gel into the near-perfect statement that every part of
Mering's strange journey before this led up to. ~ Fred Thomas
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