NAMED AFTER Southern Gothic novelist Flannery O’Connor’s book Wise Blood, Weyes Blood (AKA Los Angeles musician Natalie Mering) plays anti-Americana that feels all too appropriate in this age of uncertainty.
“Land of Broken Dreams,” the opening track of Mering’s 2014 record The Innocents, is a perfect introduction to her brand of doomsday folk. “My family, my country, and my school have all left me dry,” she sings, “To wonder why we are just born to buy then die/And change nothing.” As Weyes Blood, Mering writes songs about resisting the urge to self-sedate when you’re constantly “put through the failure of some man’s world.”
This theme is fleshed out on last year’s bewitching Front Row Seat to Earth. The entire album reflects the theatrical nature of observing our world collapse—it’s like bringing camping chairs to watch monolithic glaciers crumble and crash into the sea.
“It’s kind of referencing our perception,” Mering says, “how we perceive the world around us, and how that might be the biggest flaw in human suffering—our perception being somewhat limited in understanding the magnanimity and the full scope of existence. Being a first world country, technically, we’re kind of the first row to witnessing what’s happening on a global scale. But at the same time, we end up witnessing what’s happening around us like theater because it’s so colossal, it’s so big and beyond our control.”