Photo Credit: Leonard Nevarez, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0">CC BY 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)
By Hassan El-Seddiq&nbsp;
In 2019, singer-songwriter Weyes Blood a.k.a Natalie Mering prophesized that a harrowing and frightful period of time is headed our way in her highly acclaimed fourth studio album, &ldquo;Titanic Rising&rdquo;, which was a sprawling baroque pop triumph with a shimmering synth and ethereal vocals, but at its core, it encompassed a cautionary message about the change that is coming, the dangers of self-isolation and the ever-growing number of people who fall victim every day to modernity.&nbsp;
Mering&rsquo;s latest post-Covid release, &ldquo;And In Darkness, Hearts Aglow&rdquo; is carefully observing the current state of the world, which Mering forecasted three years ago, but with a hopeful eye and a cautious yet undivided faith in humanity, with the 34-year-old singer reassuring us that we can pick ourselves back up and move into a convalescent tomorrow if we admit our mistakes and learned from them.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Weyes Blood dubbed the newly released album as a sequel to 2019&rsquo;s &ldquo;Titanic Rising&rdquo;, which saw the artist reach an artistic peak and strike an alluring sound that both fans and critics agreed on as heavenly and graceful, &ldquo;And In The Darkness Hearts Aglow&rdquo; is truly in every way as grand and as majestic as its predecessor.
The album opens up with the track &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Not Just Me It&rsquo;s Everybody&rdquo;; a peaceful drowned-down strings announce the beginning of this 46-minute dreamscape which is interrupted artfully with ornate piano chords and smooth drum before Natalie&rsquo;s angelic voice kicks in with lyrics about her desperation for a consequential human connection. The song culminates into a deep study of isolation and our self-imposed alienation due to our addiction to virtual realities, as it represents a channel for us to present an alternate version of ourselves.
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&ldquo;Children of the Empire&rdquo; is another omnium gatherum of resplendent instruments, as some infrequent instruments show up in the mix, like a trombone, a tuba, and a harp, besides of course the usual suspects that we expect now in a Weyes Blood track such as synthesizers, pianos, organs, cellos, violins, and guitars. The track sees Natalie once again transcend vocally while urging us to take responsibility for the mess we made as a society, and try to better ourselves and our behaviors to deliver a more habitable world to future generations. As stated in one of the most powerful moments in the album that &ldquo;we don't have time anymore to be afraid&rdquo;.
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While &ldquo;Grapevine&rdquo; sounds more acoustic and held back compared to the theatrical pieces that came before it, it&rsquo;s not to be belittled as it is one of the most potent and soul-stirring cuts in the tracklist, Mering said of the track press materials &ldquo;Grapevine&rdquo; is a road song set along the titular stretch of Southern California&rsquo;s Interstate 5. &ldquo;Technology is harvesting our attention away from each other, we all have a &lsquo;Grapevine&rsquo; entwined around our past with unresolved wounds and pain. Being in love doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mean being together. Why else do so many love songs yearn for a connection?&rdquo;
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&ldquo;God Turn Me into A Flower&rdquo; is probably the brightest spot on the album. Just like the track &ldquo;Movies&rdquo; in &ldquo;Titanic Rising&rdquo; which was a purely spiritual journey that feels like transcending to a higher realm, &ldquo;God Turn Me into A Flower&rdquo; functions in the exact same way. Inspired by the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, and he was famous for his unhinged beauty, which will lead him to become obsessed with his own reflection in the river and will keep staring at it till he pins away and turns into a flower.&nbsp;
Natalie in a stroke of genius re-contextualized the myth into youth obsession with gaining fame, and how we all unanimously believe that we deserve a better future without working to attain it, she said in an interview with <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/weyes-blood-and-in-the-darkness-hearts-aglow/">Pitchfork</a> &ldquo;Culturally and societally, we are in an age of narcissism. It&rsquo;s almost like the greatest hubris of all is just thinking that there&rsquo;s just gonna be something better, and never working on yourself. Oh, you just need this career, this milestone. That&rsquo;s something that capitalism bred in people, especially starting in the &rsquo;50s and the &rsquo;60s in America. In the myth of Narcissus, he turns into a flower, which is something very soft and pliable, and receptive. I felt like that was just the perfect way to deal with everything that was going on&rdquo;.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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What Natalie managed to accomplish with &ldquo;And In The Darkness Hearts Aglow&rdquo; is not an easy feat, to establish a centerpiece to a doomsday trilogy, to break the stigma around how being socially aware is stereotypical and non-realistic, and encapsulate the entire dilemma of the human condition in the most graceful and hopeful way.&nbsp;
The biggest praise that this album could receive is that it lived up to being the sequel to &ldquo;Titanic Rising&rdquo;, it is tentatively authoritative and cautiously buoyant, without being preachy or priggish, as it is the rare moment when a highly talented artist in her pinnacle of artistry happened to have a significant message to deliver and knows the exact way to efficiently phrase it.&nbsp;
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