In late 2011, at the height of the Occupy movement, she was there, and at times she still joins ocean clean-ups on the California coast. But in recent years, Natalie Mering has increasingly traded life as a climate activist for that of a musician, under the name Weyes Blood. The sense of responsibility has remained – and sounds louder than ever on her sometimes dreamy, sometimes very theatrical fourth album Titanic Rising.
Written by: Ruben van Dijk
Photos: Hannah Jacobs
There is some confusion at the beginning of the conversation, which very aptly takes place on a rambunctious waterfront. The title of Mering's latest, it turns out, is not a reference to the flopped B-movie Raise the Titanic (1980, starring Sir Alec Guinness), in which the American secret service tries to surface the wreck of the Titanic (whereabouts unknown at the time) and thus trump the Soviet Union with the minerals that the ship is said to harbor. So not that film, although it portrays well the megalomania and misplaced arrogance of humanity that Mering wants to highlight with the album. “That man supposed to have all power over nature, that we thought we had built an unsinkable ship, which then collided and sank on its maiden voyage – that seems to me very similar to what we are dealing with now, except that now we are not bumping into an ice sheet, but the ice sheets are melting. The entire civilization is sinking and the people who will be hit hardest are Third World countries that do not have the resources to deal with this rapid climate change. Titanic Rising is about rising sea levels and how the symbolism of the Titanic can hopefully rise from the ocean, like a phoenix from the ashes, to remind people that we don't have all the power over nature and that we need to be more humble.”
"I was amazed that Titanic had no political impact whatsoever."
Not that James Cameron didn't make the Titanic iconic enough. Perhaps even too iconic, if you ask Mering. It is one of the “movies I watched as a kid” that she refers to on the stand-out track 'Movies' (a track culminating in a very cinematic interpolation of Arvo Pärt's 'Fratres'), which left an indelible impression on her at the time. “It won Best Picture, was the most successful film of all time at the time, and yet the problems of the film did not seem to reach the public at all. Ever since I was a little girl, I was so aware that it was about human pride and about the way ‘third-class citizens’ are treated, how they bear the brunt of the big decisions made by white men. I was amazed that it had no political impact whatsoever.”
Mering likes films, she sings on 'Movies' and this is evident time and again in the conversation - but the medium also has fundamental problems, she says, and she realizes that too at a young age. From the age of twelve she refused, out of principle, to watch them for three years. “I felt so betrayed, because I believed very much in happy endings, that I too was entitled to a happy ending, but I realized that I was completely brainwashed by that crap. They also meant so much to me.” That rebellion did not last long, she has hardly become any less outspoken about it, although here it mainly focuses on what they call 'movies' in the US; box office blockbusters, snacks, and so something completely different from ‘film’. We so badly want those movies to be a culturally unifying experience, says Mering, but as long as they also have to earn money, they remain too hollow, too insignificant to have a real (positive) philosophical impact.
Hollywood's brainwashing practices often reside in love and how it has come to be distorted in the 21st century, a recurring theme on Titanic Rising. On ‘Everyday’, with another naval reference, Mering sings of those friends everyone has, ‘sailing off on their ships to nowhere.’ “Nowadays there is a certain restlessness to dating; people who exclaim, ‘I'm broken, I'm done, I'm calling it quits,’ and before you know it, they're dating again. We have a distorted view of how relationships should be, but in the end we are all mammals who need love and affection, so you may be holding a disproportionate image of a ‘soulmate’, someone who is going to be everything to you - but that kind of expectation is simply unrealistic.” And as far as Mering is concerned, it's movies like Titanic that are responsible for that.
And yet she has a soft spot for it, as for that other blockbuster full of seaset calamities: Jaws. Squabbling and screaming sounds from that film were repeated several times as a motif on her previous album Front Row Seat to Earth (2017). And that's by no means the only water-related symbolism in Weyes Blood's work: she has already appeared as a mermaid in the video for 'Seven Words' and in the video for 'Movies' she really dives in deep.
“I grew up on the Pacific Ocean and have always been deeply influenced by the ocean, so that water theme will always be a part of my work. Perhaps also because I now see the ocean as the matriarch of our planet, the origin of all life.” Now that she no longer lives right on the California coast (too expensive!), but in the hilly landscape of Laurel Canyon, LA – a place with an almost mythical music history where the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Graham Nash and Father John Misty found their inspiration – Mering has started to look at the ocean differently. “I'm becoming more and more aware of how powerful it is and, to be honest, I've become a little scared of it.”
The parallels with Mering's other obsession, space, are obvious. “Deep sea, deep space. They're both really crazy, mysterious places that we haven't mapped out yet, just like our subconscious. That symbolism really appeals to me, as a very introspective person who is constantly looking within themselves for answers and meaning. There’s no light shining, monsters live there...” Mering's inner galactic journey is nowhere more present than on 'Andromeda', named after the galaxy, but also after the mythological daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia who almost perished under her mother's pride, and, were it not for Perseus, was almost consumed by a sea monster. You can fill in the rest yourself.
All the Laurel Canyon influences that have shaped Weyes Blood musically have also earned her the label of a 'nostalgia artist'. With that label in mind, such an inner journey across seas and through galaxies can also seem like escapism. “We are all trying to escape the harsh reality of the modern world. Everyone wants to find that depth in themselves so that we feel a little more at ease – because out in the real world many people often feel isolated, rejected and confused. Who wouldn't want to escape that? The world we have constructed is not the most fertile or loving world. We should just not shirk our greatest responsibility.”
It's a bit of a twilight zone: when is it justified to escape the world? When can we lose ourselves in nostalgia? And above all: when shouldn’t we? As far as Mering is concerned, this album can be used as a refuge. “I don't think my music is a negative refuge. Hopefully it's all introspective and thoughtful, and not hollow or destructive. If that’s the case, as far as I'm concerned, as a musician it's best to just stop.” And so the conversation returns to the film industry. “Nostalgia is a power tool that is also very often used against us. Take, for example, a show like Stranger Things, which takes all children's films from the Reagan era and lumps everything together. Everybody just goes fuck wild crazy for it, because they grew up with it and everything’s changing so quickly these days. It is a tool of strength that mainly benefits the capitalists.” That we easily succumb to nostalgia is perhaps most apparent from Titanic, which made everyone eagerly long for something that cost the lives of 1500 people, the ideological implications slowly lost in the eyes of Leonardo DiCaprio.
The nostalgia on the album, which also seems to draw much less from the above-mentioned influences, is limited to the songwriting, according to Mering. “Musically or in any other way, I hope it sounds like 2019. But 2019 is also the sum of all the years that preceded it. The seventies are still there, just under an extra coat of paint. Through our capitalist system, that's how we see the passage of time: that's over and this is where we are now. No, it is a sum.” Just like the climate change that Mering continues to warn against between the lines, because, as a lot of protest signs have been reading in recent months, Titanic wouldn't happen in 2040.
Titanic Rising will be released on April 5 on Sub Pop. Weyes Blood will be in Paradiso on Monday 29 April.
Titanic Rising will be released on April 5 on Sub Pop. Weyes Blood will be in Paradiso on Monday 29 April.
