Following her charming 2014 album, The Innocents, Natalie Mering AKA Weyes Blood has recently released her fourth album Front Row Seat To Earth, a work that reflects upon the the sound and posture of 1960s and seventies folk possibly more than any other in contemporary music.
After gaining some vital experience alongside Ariel Pink and among the ranks of Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Weyes Blood embarked on her own endeavors about a decade ago. On her second album for Mexican Summer and fourth in total, she carries on polishing and perfecting her soaked in folk sound with ambient electronic experimentation that compliments the musical foreground's traditional accent in utter consensus. Where the harmonious piano, acoustic guitar and brass instruments meets the synth-driven celestial electronic production, courtesy of co-producers Mering herself and Deerhoof's Chris Cohen, Front Row Seat To Earth finds the perfect balance without ever sounding forced to do so.
Thematically the album, despite its old-time-y sound, it does not face the past. On the contrary Weyes Blood seems to have her observational eye set on the present and the future, picking on her own generation and the modern times with songs like Generation Why in which she humors our times' relationship with our phones and the vanity of it all. This dire abbreviation people unfortunately still use, Y-O-L-O, in the voice of Weyes Blood it has never sounded this poetic before.
Weyes Blood may look a bit and sound a lot like a young Joan Baez, but ultimately she is her own person and artist and she proves it in the best way possible, by continuously releasing one affecting work of art after another.
Watch the three videos that have emerges so far off Front Row Seat To Earth and listen to the album right below...
ZR