The all-encompassing artistry of Weyes Blood
Few contemporary artists have cultivated a sound and aesthetic quite as specific as Weyes Blood. With visuals just as glowing as her dreamy chamber-pop sound, Natalia Laura Mering has curated an all-encompassing concept for her art, one which carries throughout her music, artwork, and live performance.
It took Mering some experimentation to decide on her current style. Though she adopted the moniker of Weyes Blood (originally spelt Wise Blood) at the age of 15, she started out playing bass in the Portland-based experimental band Jackie-O Motherfucker and providing keys and vocals to the noise rock of a band called Satanized. A far cry from the ethereality of her current output, Mering spent the early 2000s touring with the two bands, only releasing her first album under the name Weyes Blood in 2011.
The record was called The Outside Room. Though it represented Mering in the infancy of her career, the defining characteristics of the Weyes Blood project were already coming through. The album featured Mering’s deep vocals, contemplative lyricism and a dreamy cover. One track even preempts ‘A Lot’s Gonna Change’, the cathartic opening track to her 2019 album Titanic Rising. ‘In the Isle of Agnitio’ features the repeated refrain, “Why can’t I change? You can change”.
Mering continued to experiment with her aesthetic and sound throughout the early 2010s, putting out two more albums, The Innocents and Front Row Seat to Earth, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The latter saw Weyes Blood really cementing her artistry with artwork that features Mering lying by water. It’s overwhelmingly blue, a feature which has remained consistent in her discography ever since.
The record is intimate and dreamy, musing on themes of dreaming, love, and change, all of which have remained crucial concerns in her lyrics ever since. Sonically, it’s a delicate, airy record which fuses baroque pop, psychedelia and indie together to forge a sound that is wholly Weyes Blood. There’s an ethereality to it that her indie girl peers haven’t quite been able to match.
Since then, Mering has wholeheartedly committed to this aesthetic. Titanic Rising, her fourth studio album, continues the themes of change both in relation to her and to the climate. On the opening track, she laments, “A lot’s gonna change in your lifetime”. The intimate and vulnerable record also divulges Mering’s love for the movies, her trepidation surrounding dating apps, and references to the Titanic.
The record is expertly put together, flowing much like the water, which again features in its accompanying artwork. Mering’s controlled vocals bring so much depth to her lyrics, while her soft chamber pop instrumentals forge a soundscape around them which is equal parts gloomy and cathartic.
Weyes Blood truly committed to the visuals for this record, diving underwater to get the shot for the cover art. The photo features a glowing image of Mering in her teenage bedroom, which is nearly full to the ceiling with water. The concept for the artwork was entirely Mering’s, who approached photographer Brett Stanley to recreate a room underwater to reflect the album’s themes of submergence and rising. The two worked together to build the bedroom in Stanley’s studio and shot the artwork in a real pool, bringing Mering’s vision to life.
The finalised product has become one of the most iconic album covers in recent memory, a perfect reflection of the album’s ambience and of Mering’s all-encompassing, committed artistry. Mering shared the meaning behind the artwork with Stereogum, stating: “It’s kind of like the waters have risen over this bedroom, which to me is symbolic of kind of a subconscious altar that all young people in Western culture create for themselves. This kind of altar for whatever they worship in their sacred space that’s just theirs…”
She continued: “The bedroom is an archetype. To me, it stands for a lot of the silliness of our modern culture, where the kind of things that we worship in our sacred spaces are based on media and movies because we don’t really have much else in the way of myths if that makes sense.”
For many, the music of Weyes Blood has become something to worship. Audiences have widely become enamoured with her all-encompassing artistry and flocked to her live shows to experience it in real life. Expectedly, Mering’s commitment to the world of Weyes Blood extends to this aspect of her artistry.
The release of her most recent album last year, titled And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, served to prove her live capabilities. The studio album featured a similarly blue, glowing album cover which depicts Mering with flowing hair, an elegant white heart, and, true to the record’s title, a red, glowing heart. When Weyes Blood took the record across North America and Europe on the In Holy Flux tour, she brought her glowing heart with her.
For most of the show, Mering twirled around the stage in a manner just as floaty and ethereal as her music, wearing a white dress akin to the one she dons in the artwork. Towards the end of the set, upon her performance of ‘Twin Flame’, a red heart began to shine from beneath her dress. Amidst the darkness, her performance mirrored the artwork and album title perfectly. In the darkness, her heart really was aglow.
Her pairing of unique, elegant baroque pop with vulnerable lyrics that discuss contemporary culture is already something to shout about, but each creative decision she makes outside of her sound seems carefully taken to elevate it. It’s an all-encompassing artistry that is unparalleled in contemporary music. In a landscape driven by streaming numbers and chasing TikTok trends, it’s a refreshing change to find an artist so devoted to her artistic vision. Few modern artists have devoted themselves to a concept and sound so masterfully, heavily curating each aspect of her output to create a distinctly Weyes Blood universe. Her music takes on a whole life of its own, and each new Weyes Blood record provides an all-encapsulating world of watery soundscapes and visuals to delve into.
