Ignored           Obscured            Restored

Titanic Rising, the 2009 album by Weyes Blood (Natalie Laura Mering) is receiving huge plaudits in the year-end polls for Best Albums of 2019.  Paste recently placed it at #1!  I like the album, but I don’t love it.  Some of the atmospheric noodling on it just bores me.  But the album does contain one of my favorite songs of the year – “Something to Believe.”

“Something to Believe” starts of sounding like The Carpenters, but hipper.  But the simple piano based ballad develops into so much more.  There’s a haunting slide guitar that perfectly hits the mark.  And the production expands into a fully orchestrated arrangement with Mering’s vocals soaring above it all – Court and Spark era Joni Mitchell like.  This is no doubt partly in credit to Foxygen’s Jonathon Rado, who co-produced the album.

Lyrically, Mering calls for the need for connection to other people.

Give me something I can see
Something bigger and louder than the voices in me
Something to believe

On a side note, the name Weyes Blood was inspired by the Flannery O’Connor novel Wise Blood, so I assume that’s how the band name is supposed to be pronounced.

Enjoy… until next week.