• News

• All

Mar 28, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Kathryn Vetter Miller Weyes Blood

Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) is releasing a new album, Titanic Rising, on April 5 via Sub Pop, her first album for the label. You can now stream the whole album a week early. Head over to NPR First Listen to hear the album. Below are her upcoming tour dates.

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.”

In a press release Mering describes 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 says 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 adds. “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 explains. “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 puts it, “that movies had been brainwashing people and their ideas about romantic love.”

At the end of the press release, Mering sums 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:

California:

Apr. 01 - Fresno, CA - Strummers
Apr. 02 - Santa Cruz, CA - The Atrium at The Catalyst
Apr. 03 - Santa Barbara, CA - Velvet Jones
Apr. 04 - Los Angeles, CA - Masonic Lodge [Sold Out]

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

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.