Weyes Blood – Front Row Seat To Earth
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Natalie Mering, the being behind Weyes Blood, embeds her sublime song in a harmonic gauze of arpeggiated piano, acoustic guitar, druggy horns, & outer space electronics. Propulsive, spare drums carry us across the album's course. There is a faded California beauty to Front Row. A gentle honesty that recalls the finest folk music made on the West Coast of the '70s. The hue hangs in the sweet-spooky harmonies, the pulsing sway of the vibrato & the ecstatic chord resolves. But this beauty is scratched with shadow; with dark foreboding, alienation, & acceptance of change. Love & loss balance together in suspended alchemy, as the earthiness of the singer-songwriter tradition wears digital sounds like feathers in its hair.
Mering, together with co-producer Chris Cohen contrasts live band intimacy with the post-modern electric sheen of A.M. radio atmospherics. The experimental flourishes sparkle amid the succinct, thoughtful arrangements. The closeness of this record - how personal, alone, & frank it feels - conceals its aspirations to the outside, to the "Earth" of its title. Weyes Blood harbours devastating weight while also universalising the strange ways of identity & relationships. These are not typical love songs or protest songs -- they are painful, poignant riddles that celebrate the ambiguity of love & affirm the conflict of harmonious life within a disharmonic world.
Review
AllMusic rating:AllMusic users:Artist: Weyes BloodLabel: Mexican SummerFormat: LPUnits: 1Country: USGenre: Pop & RockStyle: AmbientA1 Diary
A2 Used To Be
A3 Be Free
A4 Do You Need My Love
B1 Generation Why
B2 Can'T Go Home
B3 Seven Words
B4 Away Above
B5 Front Row Seat