Weyes Blood and The Dark Juices – “Outside Room, The” – [Not Not Fun]

These emotions are ancient, but the songs are new. Natalie Mering is the Weyes one, potentially stewing alone in her own Dark Juices (although a Shadow Ring hovers near by, while a Nautical Almanac is tucked under her pillow). But again, the emotions here are simply transcendent from 1000 years ago, looking out over the cliffs, to the songs you thought you heard emanating from Nico’s casket, to the future love song of the last bird on the planet. The album feels like it looks, if you can see the cover… A lot of Graham Lambkin’s mastering I think included leaving the album outside by an abandoned lighthouse during a windstorm. This is not lo-fi for lo-fi sake, but to clank and whoosh its way directly to your limbic system. Mering?? (once upon a Jackie O-Mofo bassist) has a deep in tone and deeper in spirit voice, but she can also soar in angelic choruses of her tracked selves. And good lord, does she know how to work those divergent harmonies, pulling the fabric of the world apart. The use of keyboards, that sound as if they were swiped from a corrupt cathedral or a harmonium stolen from a blind guru, give this album a sort of mystical aura, the songs are simple with some guitar and bass at times, but the halo of lighthouse treatments are spot on.?? And her voice. Intoning…alone…channeling the kind of loneliness that is ever peaceful.
An excellent release.

-Thurston Hunger