Most of the people in my life know that I’m a huge Dylan fan – to the point where, if I’m talking to the right person, his lyrics often pop into my head in conversation. When this happens, I usually go for it, with the half-ironic vulnerability of someone who recognizes their ridiculousness but also needs to communicate how perfectly this bit of poetry applies to what we’re talking about. Generally, the drier the lyric, the funnier it is to both of us (especially if I recite it in my best Bob Dylan sneer). But the ones that really crack me up are the lyrics that really shouldn’t be as profound as they sound in a song – if removed from its context, how memorable could “Time is a jet plane / It moves too fast!” possibly be? If you follow that train of thought far enough, you’d realize how backwards it is for me to think that way. Lyricism is the art of simplification, and the best lyricists are masters of directness, though not necessarily masters of specificity. We love artists who can let their music speak for itself, or who tell us just enough with their lyrics to make us feel something.
Titanic Rising is full of lyricism that is refreshingly simple and exact – it forces you to analyze additively, not reductively. In doing so, your immediate experiences are swung into its domain. In the album’s opening lament “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, Weyes Blood (an alias of multi-instrumentalist Natalie Laura Mering) wishes for a time in her life when she felt that “no good thing could be taken away”, before she was forced to deal with the loss, heartbreak, and alienation that plague so many of us in adulthood. What follows is an album that alludes heavily to a breakup but keeps the inner experience of the brokenhearted person in much clearer focus than it does the relationship that ended. In songs like “Picture Me Better”, Weyes Blood sings about longing for someone and wanting to be ready for them, but that desire never feels like the album’s focus. Natalie’s desire to feel loved (“Everyday”), to reconcile the distance between her dreaminess and life’s inertia (“Andromeda”), or to more clearly understand herself feel like much louder concerns by comparison.
All of this is described sparingly but directly through Natalie’s lyrics, allowing the music to do the rest of the heavy lifting to great effect. The production backdrop of the album is florid, piano-driven, and Spektorized, giving us an album full of rock-solid, wistful ballads from the 70’s pop-rock idiom. At times, it feels like a self-titled Smiths’ album with a fuller sonic palate. Weyes Blood uses synths liberally but never with the intent of having them sound like synths: They sound like strings, they sound like the choir setting on your Casio, and between the verses of “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, they sound like a tear-jerking robot powering down that gives Kanye a run for his money. The Queen vocal harmonies and the Billy Joel bounciness are there, but in a way that feels familiar. The chunky post-Beatles chord progressions go where you expect them to, but not quite in the way that you expect. By establishing this familiarity (even if it does lie within the uncanny valley), Titanic Rising more easily creates moments of emotional depth and catharsis – the waters flooding Natalie’s room flood yours, too.
And through this you’re taken into Natalie’s consciousness, into the tenderness and empathy and sometimes paranoia that goes into preserving one’s own mind. It’s that self-exploration that saves the album from the intensity of sadness most of the time - Natalie is full of hopefulness despite being crushed (“Everyday” is upbeat for a reason) and full of self-belief even as she re-learns to trust others. “Don’t cry,” she says, “it’s a wild time to be alive.”
Listen to Titanic Rising on Bandcamp:
