Weyes Blood is the stage name of Natalie Laura Mering, a singer-songwriter whose music combines ethereal folk melodies with experimental element, layered with nostalgic sounds reminiscent of '70s singer-songwriters.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Mering's early years were spent in constant motion until her family settled in Pennsylvania when she was 11. Her father, Sumner Mering, played in the band Sumner and once dated both Joni Mitchell and Anjelica Huston in the 1970s. "It was a weird, funky, new wave vibe in my house,"
she recalled to The Independent.
Her parents are both born-again Christians. Mering is no longer religious but admits to keeping "a small interior space" for spirituality.
Music was the family's common language. The home stereo swung wildly from Stevie Wonder and Tower of Power to Tupac, Dr. Dre, and Joni Mitchell. Her father's favorite band was XTC, whose clever, melodic brand of punk left a deep impression on her, while her mother gravitated toward guitar virtuosos like Django Reinhardt and Segovia. "My brothers were into rap," Mering told The Sun. "So I grew up with an odd mixture, but I took music pretty seriously."
By age 13, Mering was working in a record store, devouring everything she could get her hands on. "I became a bit of a completist," she said. "I just wanted to know everything about everything." Her discovery of Broadcast's 1997 album Work and Non Work on eBay was a turning point: "As soon as I heard Broadcast, I realized it was OK to make freaky, weird, nostalgic music that is perfectly relevant."
Mering has been performing under variations of the name Weyes Blood (pronounced wise blood) since she was 15. Flannery O'Connor's 1952 novel Wise Blood, which she read as a teen, inspired the name. "I find it so beautiful that blood comes from our ancestors and stays alive," she explained.
She changed the spelling to Weyes "to make it my own thing." Though Mering sometimes wishes she'd chosen something easier to pronounce, there's no going back "I made an impulsive decision at 15, and I'm sticking with it," she said.
She studied music at Lewis & Clark College in Portland but dropped out after one year to pursue her music career. Before she was crafting baroque pop masterpieces like Titanic Rising, Mering was deep in the Philadelphia experimental noise rock scene, building custom instruments and exploring power electronics. "It was like a sculptor smashing marble just to see how it crumbles," she said.
During her Philly underground music era, Mering lived in a three-story warehouse converted into a communal art space with no central heating but a music studio and even a sensory deprivation tank. "I was living off rice and beans and dumpster bread, and young enough that it wasn't a health problem yet," she said.
Her breakthrough album, Titanic Rising (2019), received critical acclaim, winning the 2020 Libera Award for Best Indie Rock Album.
She is passionate about reading and film, often referencing literary works and classic movies as inspirations for her sound and lyrics. "
God Turn Me Into A Flower," for instance, draws from the ancient myth of Narcissus, while
Titanic Rising's title is a nod to the film
Titanic (1997). The film and its cinematic mythos informed the album's sound and concept.
Her all-time favorite piece of music is Olivier Messiaen's eight-movement chamber music piece "Quatuor Pour la Fin du Temps," which he wrote in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II on an out-of-tune piano, a one-string cello and a broken clarinet. "The desolation is so audible, and the redemption comes in heavy on 'LouangeaÌ l'Eterniteì de Jeìsus,'"
Mering told Elle. "It never ceases to amaze me how something so dissonant and minimal can say so much about the human condition."
Mering is committed to environmental awareness and often blends activism with music, encouraging her listeners to pay attention to global issues and the natural world. Her 2022 album And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is intended as a response to collapse, both personal and planetary. It follows Titanic Rising (which sounded the alarms) and is positioned as grappling with being "in the thick of it."
