Name: Titanic Rising
Brand: Weyes Blood

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

SP1232-1.

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Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: Yes

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2019-04-05

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Sub P­op

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

098787123210

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

SP1232-2

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "SP1232-2"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Download code: No

Gatefold Jacket with Dust Sleeve.

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098787123227

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "098787123227"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Weyes Blood

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

Sub Pop

<a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/weyes-blood-titanic-rising">Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising</a><a href="https://roughtrade.com/gb/music/weyes-blood-titanic-rising"> </a>

Rough Trade Exclusive gold vinyl and bonus disc.

Natalie Merring's graceful and glorious 4th album sees the artist comfortably slip into her sonic potential with all ease and elegance of slipping on a kaftan.

Titanic Rising is Merring's grand journey into the unknown and her fear of going the same way as the unsinkable ship. The Titanic in this sense is not rising so much as Weyes Blood finds herself sinking. But much like the band on the Titanic, Merring defiantly plays on, accepting her fate.

She sings of falling, vast empty galaxies, quicksand. Her fear of being swallowed up by the great abyss of loneliness is almost paralysing, if it weren't for her therapeutic conclusion that she must embrace it to overcome it.

She implores her lover to stop calling on Andromeda, on Everyday she explains that she's "Sailing off on the ships to nowhere/Got a lot of things to clear away" and while warning the listener not hang on to things on A Lots Gonna Change, she carves out arguably her saddest (but equally her most hopeful) line of the album "Falling trees, get off your knees/No one can keep you down/If your friends and your family/Sadly don't stick around/It's by time you'll learn to get by" (Damn).

With the help of Foxygen's Jonathon Rado, Merring's sound on Titanic Rising reflects her sense of separation. Echoey synths and far off strings. It draws heavily on the 60's Laurel Canyon sound of folk, soul and psychedelia. Merring channels Mama Cass on Everyday, and the weeping, chiming guitar on Andromeda would not feel out of place on All Things Must Pass. Lyrically she has the touch and emotion of Joni Mitchell and Carole King. A beautiful and bewitching achievement.

2. The Cinematic Orchestra - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/the-cinematic-orchestra-to-believe">To Believe</a>

3. Lady Lamb - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/lady-lamb-even-in-the-tremor">Even in the Tremor</a>

4. Ohtis - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/ohtis-curve-of-earth">Curve of Earth</a>

5. Lambchop - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/lambchop-this-is-what-i-wanted-to-tell-you">This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You)</a>

6. Nick Waterhouse - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/nick-waterhouse-nick-waterhouse">Nick Waterhouse</a>

7. Ibibio Sound Machine - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/ibibio-sound-machine-doko-mien">Doko Mien</a>

8. Lee Fields &amp; The Expressions - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/lee-fields-and-the-expressions-it-rains-love">It Rains Love</a>

9. Ratso - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/ratso-subborn-heart">Stubborn Heart</a>

10. Priests - <a href="https://roughtrade.com/us/music/priests-the-seduction-of-kansas">The Seduction of Kansas</a>

Albums of the Month - April 2019

Albums of the Year 2019 Exclusives

Albums of the Year 2019 Top 100

Essential

Rough Trade Albums of the Year 2019 No. 2

See also Album of the Year Exclusive <a href="https://www.roughtrade.com/us/weyes-blood/rough-trade-sessions">Rough Trade Session</a> EP

One of our favourite artists over the last few years has been Natalie Mering aka Weyes Blood - her previous albums on Mexican Summer were sublime, but her album on Sub Pop has taken her to another level. The phantom zone, the parallax, the upside down—there is a rich cultural history of exploring in-between places. With Titanic Rising she has designed her own universe to soulfully navigate life’s mysteries.

Manoeuvering through a space-time continuum, she plays the role of melodic, sometimes melancholic, anthropologist. Tellingly, Mering classifies Titanic Rising – which was written and recorded during the first half of 2018, after three albums and years of touring - as the Kinks meet WWII or Bob Seger meets Enya. The latter captures the album’s willful expansiveness (“You can tell there’s not a guy pulling the strings in Enya’s studio,” she notes, admiringly). The former relays her imperative to connect with listeners. “The clarity of Bob Seger is unmistakable. I’m a big fan of conversational songwriting,” she adds. “I just try to do that in a way that uses abstract imagery as well.”

The Weyes Blood frontwoman grew up singing in gospel and madrigal choirs. (Listen closely to Titanic Rising, and you’ll also hear the jazz of Hoagy Carmichael mingle with the artful mysticism of Alejandro Jodorowsky and the monomyth of scholar Joseph Campbell.) Something to Believe, a confessional that makes judicious use of the slide guitar, touches on that cosmological upbringing. “Belief is something all humans need. Shared myths are part of our psychology and survival,” she says. “Now we have a weird mishmash of capitalism and movies and science. There have been moments where I felt very existential and lost.” As a kid, she filled that void with Titanic. (Yes, the movie.) “It was engineered for little girls and had its own mythology,” she explains. Mering also noticed that the blockbuster romance actually offered a story about loss born of man’s hubris. “It’s so symbolic that The Titanic would crash into an iceberg, and now that iceberg is melting, sinking civilization.” Today, this hubris also extends to the relentless adoption of technology, at the expense of both happiness and attention spans. But Weyes Blood isn’t one to stew. Her observations play out in an ethereal saunter: far more meditative than cynical. To Mering, listening and thinking are concurrent experiences. “There are complicated influences mixed in with more relatable nostalgic melodies,” she says. “In my mind my music feels so big, a true production. I’m not a huge, popular artist, but I feel like one when I’m in the studio. But it’s never taking away from the music. I’m just making a bigger space for myself.”