Weyes Blood: ‘And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow’
Following up her astounding 2019 triumph ‘Titanic Rising’, Weyes Blood is back with ‘And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow’, a stunningly vulnerable and insightful return to form from a voice unafraid to confront the anxious realities of the modern day.
Weyes Blood’s 2019 masterpiece ‘Titanic Rising’ was a cinematic exploration of a torrent of impending changes and uncertainties facing its creator Natalie Mering. It launched Mering into a world of widespread acclaim, as her narratives of vulnerability and the mission to find hope resonated so deeply with an entranced audience. It turns out this first record was part of a trilogy, and her latest release ‘And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow’ is an incredibly nuanced, melancholic and heartbreaking depiction of Mering confronting and processing the chaos she foresaw three years prior.
If ‘Titanic Rising’ began to establish a world of anxiety and isolation, ‘And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow’ is a maturing and confrontation of the reality that entails. Mering feels like she is coming to terms with the larger forces at play across society, and her inability to change them. The album’s opening track and lead single ‘It’s Not Just Me It’s Everybody’ creates a narrative of loneliness and anxiety, implying this is the inevitable result of societal shifts. Mering sings, in her signature carpenter-esque tone, how “living in a wave of overwhelming changes / we’ve all become strangers even to ourselves.” But knowing the cause doesn’t necessarily detract from the devastating blow that “it’s been so long since I felt really known.”
The sonic landscape of the album builds on the cinematic nature of Mering’s previous albums, incorporating strings and orchestral tones, which build and fall with the emotional exploration and revelations of the record’s narrative. The use of harmonics gives the music a dreamlike state, accompanying the swelling highs and lows of the album’s tone. One of the most interesting aspects of the album is found in the incorporation of nature-derived sounds. This perpetuates the sense of mourning displayed across the record, as Mering reflects on the disconnect not only between individuals, but between humanity and nature. She grounds her reflections of the universal in the vivid soundscape of natural forces, from the flow of water to the consonance of rainforest noise. This is particularly apparent in ‘God Will Turn Me Into A Flower’, in which Mering meditates on the ways in which the hardness of the world punishes vulnerability. The track has an aching desire to embrace this fragility, as she states “it’s good to be soft when they push you down”, at risk that otherwise “losing yourself when the mirror takes you too far” before fading into the immersive sounds of the forest. The idea across the album of miscommunication and increasing distance between people can, in Mering’s eyes, be contrasted with the grounding force of nature.
But a larger overarching motif of the album is found in the contrasting narratives of light and darkness, used to embody the conflicting hope and worry found in the lyrics. Tracks like ‘Hearts Aglow’ and ‘Twin Flame’ use the image of love as a literal light in the darkness, despite the stories being told not necessarily being that of healthy love, as seen in the latter track. Mering creates a story of the constant pursuit and loss of that light, describing in ‘Twin Flame’ how “I follow the light into the night” but “he kept me waiting in the dark with no place to hide.” In parallel, the album’s title and artwork continue this imagery, with the stunning, ethereal cover showing Mering wistfully looking away with a glowing heart. We are met with a protagonist continually looking for external sources of light and feeling left in the dark when the energy she needed all along was within herself.
Sonically, there are many aspects of this album that continue in Mering’s signature tone, with beautiful classical arrangements fading into rhythmic guitar and drums. The tracks with arguably the heaviest lyrical subjects, ‘Children of the Empire and ‘The Worst is Done’ has the most upbeat melodies, but portray a damningly bitter worldview of the future to come. This is a record of realisations on both a personal and societal level, and the beautiful tones of the more vulnerable tracks such as ‘A Given Thing’ provide an intimacy that makes the listener feel as if they are being whispered a secret of universal truth.
The beauty of the work of Weyes Blood is her ability to explore with nuance the intricate aspects of loneliness, insecurity and worry that come with being alive. These reflections apply across all relationships, whether romantic, platonic or even with ourselves, in an era of increasing disconnection. ‘And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow’ is a mastering of this skill, listening to it is like confronting the most universal yet isolating anxieties head-on. With Mering as your guide, just as uncertain of what lies ahead as you are, you are assured that the journey will not be alone.
