When you speak with chamber pop singer Weyes Blood, you get the impression of a woman whose soul has known this universe for many Millennia.
Born Natalie Mering, the 34-year-old creates pop ballads with a flair for apocalyptic doom – her music is feminine and beautiful, while also equal-parts ominous and hymnal. Weyes Blood’s otherworldly nature is what keeps fans enthralled with her, and why the New Yorker has labelled her the “millennial Joni Mitchell”.
In support of her fifth studio album And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, Weyes Blood returns to New Zealand to perform shows in Auckland and Wellington on May 29 and 30 as part of her In Holy Flux Tour: New Dawn tour (buy tickets here). Her last concert in Aotearoa was on March 14, 2020 – just five days before then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced gatherings of over 100 people would be banned.
She sat down with writer and fan Lyric Waiwiri-Smith to discuss her “subterranean journey inwards” in making her latest album, the art that inspired her as a child, and the “ebbs and flows of an artist’s creative life”.
Your last New Zealand concert kind of felt like that last moment of normalcy pre-Covid, a last catharsis. I was wondering how you look back at it?
I see it as this really weird chance that we finally got to finish the tour right before you guys banned gatherings.
There was this bit of serendipity about it all, like a last little hurrah, but also this deep, kind-of unknowing – I had no idea how crazy Los Angeles was going to be when I flew back, so there definitely felt like impending doom in the air.
What was it like going back to LA?
It was like a madhouse. I went to the grocery store and the only meat left was chicken feet, so I bought some and made a broth and was just like, ‘okay, let’s see where this goes’. I made a bunch of crazy choices – it was very discombobulating, and it felt like the end of a certain kind of innocence.
Do you look back on life now as pre-Covid, while this is a whole new reality?
With certain things, for sure, but I do also think we’re kind-of back. I’m noticing an emotional healing from that time, it seems like things are back in a whole new way, but there are certain things that we all learnt. I do think it was like a truth serum, and it exposed a lot of inequalities to the culture that had not been as exposed before.
When I listened to Hearts Aglow for the first time it felt like that kind of healing as well, it’s so soft and nourishing to the soul. What were you feeling when making that album?
It was like a subterranean journey inwards. I would say it’s more of an introverted record, and I was doing a lot of soul-searching and mining within myself – what is it that I really want to say that would be honest and vulnerable, but also not embarrassingly trite?
It’s so difficult to talk about modern issues without sounding unpoetic, because it’s not a very poetic conundrum, dealing with technology.
I was trying to strike that balance between being honest and vulnerable with myself, while also trying to make something that transcended that as well.
When I listen to your music, I get really curious about what art you were drawn to as a kid and what you were inspired by in your world.
I really loved Kurt Cobain and Nirvana as a little kid, and grunge and the whole Gen X thing. I looked up to that generation so much.
My brother is Gen X, so by the time I was a teenager I was like, what happened? Why didn’t we get to have that? We’ve got Matchbox 20 and the Spice Girls, what happened to Nirvana and Pearl Jam?
I remember getting into more underground music and finding a lineage of artists and thinkers dating really far back, and their sentiments, archetypes, and ideals about reality resonated with me. I just really got into the idea of making a new culture and being on the progressive front of artistic expression in a time of nostalgia and meta-physical, non-linear time breakage.
By the year 2001, we could sense that the next 20 years weren’t going to be the same as the decades of the 20th century, which were very distinctly different. It was like everything kind of flat lined when the Internet became a thing.
What is your relationship with the Internet?
I use it to tell people about my shows, and I make a couple jokes on there every once in a while, but for me, it’s very, very basic. I try to keep all my really big statements within the albums themselves.
What is inspiring you at the moment?
Lately I’ve been really into different directors throughout time who might have had a really great movie, and then a really bad movie – people who vary in quality.
I really like Mike Nichols, Paul Schrader. It’s just fun to see that when they nail it, they really nail it, and then there are other times when things don’t always totally work out.
The ebbs and flows of an artist’s creative life is valuable for me to see, because I’m such an overachiever. I want to keep making my next best thing or working to a certain standard or quality.
I do believe, as an artist and creator, that there are these moments when you have to create things that are true to how you’re feeling at that time, and it’s important not to discredit the phases of your creation, and those things can be looked back upon further down the road as really valuable.
As a musician you’re putting your art out to everyone, and it’s up for so many people’s interpretation. Is there a pressure to keep making ‘great’ art that resonates with people?
I think that as long as you stay true to yourself, that’s the way to really crack it. It’s like a time game, and you just don’t give up, but you accept that it’s going to be different, you can’t do the same note over and over again.
How are you feeling now, coming back to New Zealand?
It’s really full circle, and it’s amazing to be doing shows that I’m headlining. It’s my first time ever doing that there, so I feel a lot of gratitude and excitement. I think this show is so special and a totally different interpretation of the record. It’s maybe my most experimental show I’ve ever put on, so I can’t wait to share it.
