Gig Review: Quite The Magic Trick - Weyes Blood Live. Holy Flux!
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Weyes Blood’s Holy Flux Tour: New Dawn
Opera House, Wellington
Tuesday, May 30
As Weyes Blood, Californian-based, Pennsylvania-raised Natalie Laura Mering is making the secular hymns we need in our life right now. She’s been releasing music under this literary-influenced moniker for a decade now, but it was 2019’s Titanic Rising that saw her hit cultural paydirt (it was easily my favourite and most played album of that year). And if there’s a better record out there for conveying hope-through-sad, for basking in pensive torch balladry, it just might be Mering’s latest. Released late last year, And In The Darkness, Hearts Algow is so much of apiece with Titanic Rising, that her tour, dubbed Holy Flux: New Dawn, is comprised entirely of songs from these sister volumes.
Speaking of sister volumes, this evening starts with a set by Clementine Valentine. The local duo compromised of the Nixon sisters (named Clementine and Valentine) used to make music under the name Purple Pilgrims. The name-change hasn’t disrupted their sound. If Florence + The Machine was around in the 1990s to be signed to 4AD that would be the sound palette. As it is, we have Cocteau Twins to draw on, and Clementine Valentine have also been compared to Weyes Blood. It was, then, a perfect opener. Reverb-drenched vocals and shimmers of guitar against shards of synth and drum-machines. Yes, yes, it’s all been done before they say, but that should never stop you if you’re good enough to do it again, and do it in your own way. Clementine Valentine is an assured duo with a powerful emotional resonance. I look forward to hearing the new music’s shape on a recording. And as far as scene-setters go, this was the correct way for this show to start.
After a brief set-change interval, Mering and her four-piece backing band kick straight into a brace of songs from the new album.
That Karen Carpenter voice soars right from the opening. It’s so heartening to hear. “Sad” music hasn’t rung from the rafters like this since the days of Karen, and Harry Nilsson, since Dory Previn and Jimmy Webb, and For The Roses-era Joni Mitchell. These are the heroes that Mering has assimilated. Contemporaries like Lana Del Rey, Father John Misty and Perfume Genius are there in haunted/haunting spirit too. Add the conceptual surety of Kate Bush in performance and you have your perfect storm.
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