WEYES BLOOD – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (w/ Two-Sided Poster) – LP – Gatefold Black Vinyl

LP – Standard Edition Black Vinyl. Housed in a Gatefold Sleeve.

Long-awaited follow-up toWeyes Bloods 2019 breakthrough albumTitanic Rising.

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (akaNatalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release,And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019s best.) WhileTitanic Risingwas an observation of doom to come,And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglowis about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos.

Were in a fully functional shit show,Meringsays. My heart is a glow stick thats been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglowopens with the wistful, winsome It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody, a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up, Mering says. Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.

Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like Grapevine chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge God Turn Me into a Flower serves as allegory about our collective hubris. The Worst Is Done is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order, she says. These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment.

Tracklist:

1. It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody
2. Children of the Empire
3. Grapevine
4. God Turn Me Into a Flower
5. Hearts Aglow
6. And in the Darkness
7. Twin Flame
8. In Holy Flux
9. The Worst Is Done
10. A Given Thing