Joint Album of the Week: Rose Elinor Dougall and Weyes Blood

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Joint Album of the Week: Rose Elinor Dougall and Weyes Blood

Runners Up Include: The Drums, Ioanna Gika, Idlewild, and Priests

Apr 05, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Priest

For this week’s Album of the Week we have a tie, two albums we’ve been heavily supporting for several months now: Rose Elinor Dougall‘s A New Illusion and Weyes Blood‘s Titanic Rising. Below is info on both albums, as well as a round up and streams for other notable albums released today.

Rose Elinor Dougall: A New Illusion (Vermillion)

Rose Elinor Dougall has released a new album, A New Illusion, today via Vermillion. A New Illusion is Dougall’s third album and the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed Stelluar (which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2017). It finds the former singer of The Pipettes and one time member of Mark Ronson’s band returning to the gorgeous indie pop of her 2010 released debut album, Without Why, after dabbling with more electronic sounds on Stelluar.

Previously Dougall shared its first single, “First Sign” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Then she shared another song from it, “Take What You Can Get,” an immaculately produced propulsive string-backed track that was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Back in November she also shared the new song, “Make It With You,” which was our #1 Song of the Week and is surprisingly not featured on the new album.

The album features her brother Tom Dougall of the band TOY, along with his bandmates Maxim Barron and Max Claps, as well as Euan Hinshelwood and Joe Chilton of Younghusband. Dougall had this to say about her collaborators in a previous press release: “It does feel like a really nice group effort - I didn’t want to be over-prescriptive, so some of it is quite loose. I wanted to make it about musicianship.”

Dougall had this to say about the album: “I just wanted to sit at the piano and play, I wanted to return to something essential. There’s something comforting and solid about that instinctive relationship with music, with playing and singing.”

“First Sign” was inspired during a trip to a remote part of Andalusia, in Southern Spain. Dougall explained: “I was trying to cut loose from a situation, and this song is about vainly attempting to shake oneself free. I was looking for a loose, hazy feeling to the music to sit with the imagery of the song. I wanted it to sound like the end of summer.”

Dougall is also a former member of The Pipettes and Mark Ronson‘s band, as well as Innerspace Orchestra, a trio with Tom Furse of The Horrors and Cathy Lucas of Fanfarlo.

Read our 2017 interview with Rose Elinor Dougall on Stelluar.

Weyes Blood: Titanic Rising (Sub Pop)

Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) has released a new album, Titanic Rising, today via Sub Pop, her first album for the label.

Titanic Rising includes “Andromeda,” a new song she shared in January that was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced Weyes Blood shared a self-directed slasher movie video for the new song “Everyday,” which was our #1 Song of the Week. The album cover was photographed in a bedroom fully submerged in water, with no CGI. Video was also shared of Weyes Blood performing a new song from the album, “Something to Believe,” at Pitchfork’s Midwinter Festival in Chicago. Then she shared another new song, “Movies,” via a self-directed video in which a movie theater audience magically jump into the film they are watching. “Movies” was also one of our Songs of the Week. Weyes Blood also recently sang guest vocals on a song by Drugdealer, “Honey” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Plus she streamed the album a week early via NPR First Listen.

In a previous press release Mering described Titanic Rising as “The Kinks meet WWII or Bob Seger meets Enya.”

“You can tell there’s not a guy pulling the strings in Enya’s studio,” Mering said of the New Age pop singer who had huge success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of the other influence, Mering says: “The clarity of Bob Seger is unmistakable. I’m a big fan of conversational songwriting. I just try to do that in a way that uses abstract imagery as well.”

“An album is like a Rubik’s Cube,” she added. “Sometimes you get all the dimensions-the lyrics, the melody, the production-to line up. I try to be futuristic and ancient at once, which is a difficult alchemy. It’s taken a lot of different tries to get it right.”

The 1997 romantic blockbuster film Titanic inspired the album’s title. “It was engineered for little girls and had its own mythology,” Mering explained. “It’s so symbolic that The Titanic would crash into an iceberg, and now that iceberg is melting, sinking civilization.”

The song “Movies” also comments on the power of the silver screen; as Mering put it, “that movies had been brainwashing people and their ideas about romantic love.”

At the end of the press release, Mering summed up Titanic Rising as such: “There are complicated influences mixed in with more relatable nostalgic melodies. In my mind, my music feels so big, a true production. I’m not a huge, popular artist, but I feel like one when I’m in the studio. But it’s never taking away from the music. I’m just making a bigger space for myself.”

Weyes Blood’s last album, Front Row Seat to Earth, made it all the way to #9 on our Top 100 Albums of 2016 list.

Read our interview with Weyes Blood on Front Row Seat to Earth (from our Best of 2016 Issue).

Also read our The End interview with Weyes Blood about endings and death.

Weyes Blood Tour Dates:

True Love is Making a Comeback Tour 2019:

UK/Europe:

Apr. 22 - Brighton, UK - The Haunt
Apr. 23 - Bristol, UK - The Exchange
Apr. 24 - Manchester, UK - YES (The Pink Room)
Apr. 25 - London, UK - Islington Assembly Hall
Apr. 27 - Berlin, UK - Kantine am Berghain
Apr. 28 - Hamburg, UK - Turmzimmer
Apr. 29 - Amsterdam, UK - Paradiso Upstairs
Apr. 30 - Dunkerque, FR - 4Ecluses
May 02 - Paris, FR - La Maroquinerie
May 03 - Orleans, FR - Astrolabe
May 04 - Brussels, BE - Le Nuits Botanique (Venue: Rotonde)

North America:

May 14 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
May 16 - Seattle, WA - The Tractor
May 17 - Vancouver, BC - St James
May 18 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir
May 21 - Minneapolis, MN - Turf Club
May 22 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
May 24 - Toronto, ON - Mod Club
May 25 - Montreal, QC - Petit Campus
May 26 - Portland, ME - Space Gallery
May 28 - Cambridge, MA - Sinclair
May 29 - New York, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
May 31 - Washington, DC - U Street
Jun. 01 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda’s
Jun. 03 - Atlanta, GA - Earl
Jun. 04 - Nashville, TN - The High Watt
Jun. 06 - Dallas, TX - Club Dada
Jun. 07 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall (upstairs)
Jun. 08 - Austin, TX - Antones
Jun. 10 - El Paso, TX - Lowbrow Palace
Jun. 11 - Santa Fe, NM - Meow Wolf
Jun. 12 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar
Jun. 13 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour