MOVIES & FILMS
WITH
WEYES BLOOD
What separates movies and films? Is there a distinct line which isolates what we consider high art from the onslaught of blockbuster schlock? According to Natalie Mering, AKA Weyes Blood, there is. And based on her band’s live display at Brooklyn Steel, she’s determined to show us how the fine art of the cinema can be converted to the live stage.
Weyes Blood and her band took the stage and opened the show with lead single from her new album And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, the deeply affecting and grand-scale microcosm of the human condition “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody.” A perfect overture, setting the stage for what the next 90 minutes of music will bring us.
From here, the movies interweave into the show in numerous ways. In an ongoing instance, fans from the crowd passed DVDs from the house to the stage, where Mering would collect them and offer a cheeky aside. For example: “Ah, the 2019 live action Jungle Book. See, this is what we’d call a movie, NOT a film.” Her words drip with irony, a self-awareness that makes her both relatable and untouchable. She added Jungle Book and several others to a stack on stage, creating a bridge between the artist and the audience: offer me that which affects you, and I will give you the spectacle you desire.
For the end of the first act, Mering introduced a visual piece by English documentarian Adam Curtis, director of renowned documentaries like HyperNormalisation and The Century of the Self, to accompany the slow burning soliloquy “God Turn Me Into a Flower.” Masked by visuals of riots, violence, and brief moments of joy, Mering offers her mission statement to an unseen person, or directly to us: to remain gentle and kind in the face of the world’s darkest evils. In Curtis’ film, quick shots of Mering are seen, standing wide in an open desert or cast in shadow, her glowing heart shining radioactively, ready to break or burst.
Weyes Blood proceeds to guide the audience through her own hero’s journey, playing the ennui-tinged scorned lover on “Grapevine,” the jaunty piano optimist on “Everyday,” and the soap-box preacher enraptured in our modern lives on “Wild Time.” Mering can wear many hats, playing many characters, showing her versatility as not just a storyteller, but as an actor, bringing these characters and their moments to life.
And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow and its preceding album, 2019’s Titanic Rising, can be seen as sister albums. Both records work individually to convey themes of love, frustration, and optimism in the face of generational malaise. However, while Titanic Rising can be seen as an insular recollection on these themes, Hearts Aglow blows the doors open for the world to bare witness, letting Mering’s deepest musings on current topics feel even more relatable, tangible, and real.
This brings us to the climax of the main show: the one-two punch of “Movies” and “Hearts Aglow.” A distinct outlier from her previous album Titanic Rising, “Movies” is a monolithic piece of spaced-out meditation, with Mering reflecting on her adoration for the movies and her ability to place herself in the narratives of the cinematic works she admires and cherishes. While “God Turn Me Into a Flower” served as a mission statement for Hearts Aglow, “Movies” fulfills the same role for Titanic Rising.
When placed together, the songs feel like an effective denouement, a moment which sees our protagonist reflecting on themselves and allowing the world to see them for who they really are: a girl with wide eyes and reasonable fears, taking trips to the Santa Monica Pier during the day and watching Criterion films at night, all while her heart glows vividly with the thrill of living through every moment. The live show is a movie, the music is the score, and Natalie Mering’s haunting and lush voice, sitting calmly at the center of it all, is the perfect leitmotif.
- Aaron
