My Favorite Albums in 2019: #3 ‘Titanic Rising’ by Weyes Blood, A Review
If you love The Carpenters, you will enjoy Titanic Rising, the fourth studio album by American baroque pop/chamber pop/baroque pop singer and songwriter Natalie Mering (a.k.a. Weyes Blood).
But before you get any impression that Weyes Blood is a cheap knock-off of The Carpenters, much like how Greta Van Fleet is a carbon copy of Led Zeppelin, the similarities between Mering and Karen Carpenter as artists — the breezy and calming voice that gorgeously complements the baroque-inspired compositional elements swelling in the background — do not go far beyond their superficial traits, and end there.
Titanic Rising is the culmination of Weyes Blood’s artistic progression through the years, a point where Mering has succeeded in finding the perfect balance between innocence and maturity on her craft.
In the album, Mering, like an old soul, contemplates the many facets of life present under today’s circumstances, most, if not all of which can be summed up in two words: loss and yearning.
Throughout the record, Mering finds herself lost in a world so vivid yet so dull where the concepts of sincerity and permanence are afterthoughts among those that live within it. Love has devolved into meaningless dates and exchanges between two people struggling with their insecurities and shortcomings, finding solace in the presence of a partner they barely know outside of a dating-oriented, social networking app. Relationships between friends slowly fade away as “life always gets in the way.” People have lost touch of their self-esteem and their purpose in life, if it even has any meaning at all, as they desperately cry out for help.
Yet, amidst all the chaos that befalls Mering and all that surrounds her, she never loses sight of hope as she continuously yearns for comfort.
As the album kicks in with the opening track A Lot’s Gonna Change, Mering shows that she has accepted the fact that nothing in life is permanent and everything she values is bound to change at a certain point. The track is an earnest, piano-laden ballad that introduces the listener to a visceral, soul-stirring experience that is Titanic Rising, and from there, it doesn’t let go of the momentum it has strongly built early on.
It then transitions to Andromeda, a highly resonating track about contemplating on the idea of letting go of one’s ego and giving into love, the wholesome kind, after giving it enough thought; this superb track is arguably one of the most, if not the most, emotionally potent of the entire tracklist, with a solemn vocal performance from Mering and a very powerful wordplay on the lyrical end of things. Just everything about Andromeda elicits beauty, which makes it one of the highlights of the album and a must-listen for all.
As Titanic Rising progresses from one track to the next, the album never hits any lull, with each track — even the short interludes like the title track Titanic Rising and closer Nearer To Thee — possessing a distinct personality, keeping the listening experience fresh. For instance, Everyday presents a more jovial side of Mering, bursting with hope, as she explores her feelings of admiration towards a certain “guy” that she hopes she’ll end up spending her life with. Immediately after that, the dreadful Something to Believe provides a stark contrast to the cheerier emotions displayed in the preceding track, which is then followed by the tense and haunting Movies that kicks off after the short, mood-setting title track.
The last song that plays before the closing interlude Nearer to Thee concludes the entire record, Picture Me Better, is an ode to a friend of Mering who committed suicide around the time of the making of Titanic Rising. In the song, Mering contemplates on the precious times they’ve had, and the struggles she had encountered, most of which were explored on the themes of the preceding tracks that fueled the sorrow in the entire record, that caused her to not be there for her friend when s/he was still alive, “waiting for something with meaning to come through.”
In the end, much like how Mering went about every predicament that came her way up until that point, Mering finds relief through acceptance, which was hinted at one of the most precious lines in the entire album:
“Picture us better, we finally found a winter for your sweater.”
