Brooklyn – “So many beautiful people here tonight,” Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) observed from the stage during her set on Saturday night. She had the best vantage point to ogle everyone, but it was true from where I stood, too: It seemed like Southside Williamsburg’s handsomest longhaired men and their cute septum-pierced girlfriends had descended on Baby’s All Right to take in Weyes (pronounced wise) Blood’s earthy experimental folk. Mering herself was quite a sight, clad in a spangled leotard and backlit by Baby’s wall of stage lights.
Weyes Blood is Mering’s project, and she was joined live by a 12-string guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer, all of whom she claimed wish to remain anonymous. The unnamed band does a functional job of accompanying Mering’s electric piano and powerhouse voice.
Mering’s voice is a marvelous thing, rich and thick. She mostly sings in a low register, but she can go up to a falsetto with no loss of richness. She holds long notes and never wavers, except for when she adds some Roy Orbison-esque vibrato.
There’s something American Gothic about Weyes Blood’s music, which is fitting for an act named after a Flannery O’Connor novel. The mental image Weyes Blood’s music creates for me is a solitary woman in a cabin on a lonesome prairie or in some Southern woods preparing for winter. Most of her lyrics have a reference to something elemental, “ashes” and “stone” and “earth.” In “Some Winters,” a standout track from last year’s The Innocents, she sings, “I’m as broken as a woman can be.” It’s bleak folk music that feels both old and modern. Mering’s well-trained voice, the hook-less song structures, and the occasional use of loops and samples are distinctly post-Harry Smith, but these contemporary flourishes rest atop a studied foundation of traditional American folk music.
The performance was of a single, somber mood. The 40-minute set lacked emotional pacing, with every song a slow, lonesome dirge. The uniformity of tone paradoxically had an emotionally distancing effect, where it was difficult to feel the sorrow of the songs. Adding to the disconnect was Mering’s warm, upbeat stage banter and presence, with the aforementioned flattery and constant checking in to make sure everything sounded alright. Perhaps Weyes Blood is a persona Mering takes on, and, like Flannery O’Connor, the bleakness in her work is fictional rather than from experience. It’s good that Mering isn’t a tortured artist offstage, but her distance causes her performance to lack the volatility and intimacy of great performers like Cat Power or Neko Case.
Which is not to say that Weyes Blood is boring. Mering held the audience’s attention for the full set. She has an easy, inclusive charisma that doesn’t match perfectly with her music but is appealing. For her last song, she came down off the stage into the crowd and sang a mournful cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” which was unexpected and fun.
Weyes Blood is on tour through March. Her album The Innocents is available from Mexican Summer.
Liam Mathews
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