Spring into April with Weyes Blood
L.A. Singer Talks Climate and Confidence
WEYES BLOOD RISING: Weyes Blood has a unique way of peering into the future and the past, both musically and stylistically. On Wednesday, April 3, the L.A. resident, a k a Natalie Mering, will return to Santa Barbara with a concert at Velvet Jones (423 State St.) in her first performance here since last playing with Father John Misty. The tones of her new album, Titanic Rising, find root in ’60s and ’70s folk rock and ’80s new age; her lyrics portray our present-day post-apocalyptic future.
“Mostly it’s about a lack of dominion over nature, the Titanic being the most symbolic tragedy for man’s hubris,” she said in a phone interview. “But instead of dealing with one singular tragic event, we’re dealing with this mass kind of rising of climate change. The whole parable is symbolic. What’s happening now is what’s happening then, just on a bigger, grander scale.”
On the cover of Titanic Rising, Mering floats in a submerged bedroom. In a way, she has maybe always been a bit nautical by nature. Growing up, “I had recurring dreams that I was on a sinking ship, saving people, even before the movie,” she said. If aboard the fated Titanic in a past life, “I’d be saving people, saving babies. I tend to panic and fear on a low-grade level every day, but when something really disastrous happens, I kick into super high gear; a kind of transcendent, save-everybody mind-set.”
