Natalie Mering took the music world by storm with 2019’s “Titanic Rising,” a universally acclaimed marvel of soft-rock intimacy and baroque instrumentation accompanied by lyrics that explore love in the shadow of an ominous future. If “Titanic Rising” was Mering’s submersion in a flood of emotion, the Nov. 18 “And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow” is her triumphant emergence, buoyant with the warmth of inner strength. “Hearts Aglow” continues Mering’s career-spanning themes of loving within bleakness, but does so in a brighter way than ever before. Connoted by the desolation of COVID-19, this record is about the all-embracing love that comes from within, too beautiful to be contained within one body.
Mering, who’s more commonly known by her stage name, Weyes Blood, first reaches out to the world through “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody.” The album opener expands from introspective to philosophical, zooming out on all the world’s anxieties in solidarity with a crescendoing orchestral arrangement. The accompanying music video embodies the surrealism of Mering’s deceptively down-to-earth music, following the vocalist as she struts through a theater littered with dead bodies and dances on a bright red stage with an ill-tempered cartoon phone. “It’s Not Just Me” is a Greek tragedy bearing all the hallmarks of the early 2020s. Its juxtaposed atmospheres of optimism and apocalypse bloom like hundreds of flowers under stormy skies.
“Children of the Empire” moves from individual solidarity to a collective call to arms, announcing its presence with a slow accumulation of baroque instruments, rising from anxious synth vamps to incorporate acoustic guitar, bells, strings, background vocals, bass and bone-rattling drums. Contending with the young person’s struggle against the inheritance of a dysfunctional world, Mering decisively declares, “We don’t have time anymore to be afraid,” elevating the subdued hope of “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” to a fever pitch.
Just because “Hearts Aglow” radiates reassurance doesn’t mean that times can’t get tough, and in the case of unrequited love, the folk-balladry of “Grapevine” laments the confusion of a broken but still-glowing heart. “Grapevine” sees Mering’s songwriting at its best, draped in rich melodies and unexpected chord progressions as strong as previous hits “Andromeda” and “Wild Time.” In her Sub Pop album promotion, Mering stated, “Being in love doesn’t necessarily mean being together. Why else do so many love songs yearn for a connection?” This romantic sentiment infuses every inflection of Mering’s sanguine, deep and eloquent delivery.
The first half of “Hearts Aglow” culminates in two musically divergent but lyrically cohesive tracks, the first being the experimental “God Turn Me Into a Flower.” As Mering visits the parable of Narcissus — in which Aphrodite turns the self-absorbed man into a flower — she reinterprets the moral to praise the self-satisfaction that Narcissus feels. In this tale, his easygoing existence is the model of happiness. The flower sways in the wind while background vocals and natural field recordings take over the minimalist composition, mirroring the lyrical metamorphosis. Seamlessly, this ambience melts into the maximalist title track, “Hearts Aglow,” a synth-pop doo-wop that would make Beach House salivate. Glittering and shimmering like carnival lights, this bombastic track sways in a different way as Mering ponders if a date night on the pier is wonderful because of the “moon or the cotton candy” or because of a man “who actually understands me.” Even when doubt and uncertainty cloud our thoughts, Mering reveals the loveliness hidden in places unseen.
Though every traditional song on “Hearts Aglow” achieves near-perfection across lush musical palettes, Mering’s experiments with ambient interludes leave much to be desired. “And in the Darkness” is a 15-second outro confusingly given its own place in the tracklisting, and “In Holy Flux” snuffs the dance-pop momentum of “Twin Flame” with two minutes of atmospheric stagnance. Unlike the last two minutes of “God Turn Me Into a Flower”— an earthly ambience that effectively situates the listener within a flower’s point-of-view — these tracks don’t justify their place in an otherwise stellar tracklist, coming off as overindulgent. Though a Weyes Blood song usually doesn’t benefit from brevity, the tracklist certainly could have.
“Hearts Aglow” recovers from this lull with the closing one-two punch of “The Worst is Done” and “A Given Thing,” two noticeably optimistic songs that at last nullify the bleakness of the past and future, finding meaning in the love that exists beyond the constraints of time. As Mering’s vocals soar over the album’s most stripped-back composition, the phrase “love everlasting” becomes a refrain, presenting love as an indomitable force that persists beyond the confines of bodies and life and death. As our hearts glow, so will our spirits.
In the bio for Weyes Blood’s Bandcamp page, a simple phrase encapsulates this project’s spirit: “Weyes Blood is for lovers.” These are not lovers in the conventional sense: they are lovers of anything and everything at every stage of their life. Through each sprawling composition and poignant concept, “Hearts Aglow” transmutes those indescribable feelings in our chests into audible euphoria. The future may still hold the gloom that haunted “Titanic Rising,” but Natalie Mering is no longer at the mercy of ghosts — her heart is aglow and, like a flower, she sways gracefully in harsh winds.
