WEYES BLOOD - Front Row Seat To Earth

Nathalie Mering, the alter ego of Weyes Blood, is enjoying something of a moment in the spotlight: with “Front Row Seat To Earth” she all but silences the arty ambitions of her early work to devote herself to a more conventional album of acoustic folk ballads, some of them stripped of any real instrumental backing altogether, as in the “a cappella” of “Can’t Go Home”, conjuring a soundscape that's vaguely (an)aestheticizing, like something out of a slow-motion Refn film.

The parallel with the inner landscapes of the West Coast comes through clearly, moving between Laurel Canyon references and the desolation of “True Detective” season two (“Generation Why”, “Away Above”, the lovely “Be Free”), letting a certain allure shine through constantly which, it must be said, doesn't stop at mere surface style but also carries bare, alienated emotion, as if we'd handed a computer the task of composing a 2.0 version of “Who Needs Who” (“Used To Be”).

“Front Row Seat” certainly shows Weyes Blood's best side (until now her songwriting had been fairly mediocre in substance, as in the opening “Diary”), with a singular grace in reviving old-fashioned sentimental clichés and radio-ready melodies (“Seven Words”, “Do You Need Love?”), though in a more “post(humous)” than revivalist fashion.

The final impression, at the risk of repeating ourselves, is more disorienting than truly moving, given the conventionality of the melodic lines, and in this sense the resonance the record is having with the indie audience makes more sense.

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26/10/2016