Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:49:03 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood - Album Of The Decade.

Started by Dusty Substance, September 10, 2019, 07:01:18 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Dusty Substance


A couple of months ago I stumbled across a list of Best Songs Of 2019 So Far. In second place was Movies by Weyes Blood, an artist I was unfamiliar with so I headed over to YouTube to listen and watch. Halfway through the song I realized I had to sit down in complete amazement. It had been years, probably over a decade, since a song had that kind of impact. It was like hearing This Mortal Coil's Song To The Siren or Julee Cruise's Falling for the first time. Then I booted up Spotify and dived into Titanic Rising, the album from which Movies is taken. Every song felt oddly familiar - I had to check that it wasn't an album of covers - but they were all originals, penned by Weyes Blood.

A day or two later I picked up the record from my local HMV. It's barely left my record player since. The words "classic" and "masterpiece" get overused when it comes to evaluating modern works of art (I'm especially guilty of the latter) but Titanic Rising is a modern classic masterpiece.

It's up there with the very best records of all time. You can the influence of so many artists on there - Harry Nilsson, Joni Mitchell, The Carpenters, Carole King, Brian Eno, Lana Del Rey, Kate Bush, bit of Scott Walker, even Enya and many more. Every song is perfect. The album is a work of art.

Easily the best album I've heard this year, very likely the album of the decade and, probably, the best record of the 21st century so far. I can not remember the last time a newly released album such a profound effect on me. I even begged the owner of a local independent record shop to let me have the sole Titanic Rising poster from his shop which now hangs on my wall.

Anyone else heard this amazing record? Do you love it as much as I do?






Dusty Substance


BlodwynPig


sevendaughters

big improvement on her previous work for sure (that sounds like a backhanded compliment or even an outright diss; it's not). she's legit too in the same way Bjork was, touring with crusties in a leftfield rock band in her 20s, before finding 'proper music'. seems to have distanced herself from Ariel Pink a bit too (i like Ariel Pink a lot but i get it).

if i had a complaint about it then i'd say it feels quite studied and almost cerebral, very tutored, a sketch of emotive historical forms. even the lyrics of 'Movies' (the best song on it) allude to this, the image is more potent than the real thing. this is the same basic 'issue' i have with Julia Holter. super literate and talent for days but i feel, at the end, at arm's length. what is positive is that it could come across very poor man's Lana del Ray by being this media savvy LA record with grandeur strings and it doesn't do that at all.

i'll dig in some more though. it threw me for a loop as i didn't really rate her last one and this one seems to be a real forward leap.

ArtParrott

She's great. Really thought Titanic Rising might bang and be something of a crossover success but it hasn't turned out that way really.

Dusty Substance

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 10, 2019, 07:57:41 PM
big improvement on her previous work for sure (that sounds like a backhanded compliment or even an outright diss; it's not).

On the back of Titanic Rising I checked out her previous album, Front Row Seat to Earth, which is a perfectly fine to good album. Nothing amazing but it's easy to hear that she's a unique talent and the songs are pointing towards something better, which is what the next album certainly is.


Quote from: ArtParrott on September 10, 2019, 08:13:42 PM
She's great. Really thought Titanic Rising might bang and be something of a crossover success but it hasn't turned out that way really.

Wait until the end of the year when it's at the top of every music publications records of the year - I have a feeling a lot of units will be shifted at Christmas.


"Album of the decade." Ha, I literally thought these exact sentiments when the album first came out.

jamiefairlie

I was a big fan, The Innocents is probably my favourite album of hers and up there in my top albums of 2014, but the last two have been diminishing returns for me. I only really like Movies off the new one.

In The Beginning, Cardomom and Names Of Stars are three cracking tunes.

alan nagsworth

I really like what I've heard, which is this album once while I was cleaning my room, and a couple other bits. I remember despite being busy it was sinking right into me in the background. She's been doing stuff with Tim Heidecker recently too which is hella fuckin cool.

Proper big swell of profoundly affecting female songwriters in the last ten years. Lingua Ignota, Jessica Pratt, Susanne Sundfor, Aldous Harding and to a lesser extent Deradoorian with her criminally overlooked and exceptional album Expanding Flower Planet. Makes me very happy, the female voice is up there with the sound of percussion as the best ever shit to ever happen to music. I know that is a dumbass observation but that's just how I roll today.


sevendaughters

Deradoorian is great. Seems to have fallen into doing horoscopes for money now. Tragic.

jamiefairlie

Quote from: alan nagsworth on September 11, 2019, 06:54:23 PM
I really like what I've heard, which is this album once while I was cleaning my room, and a couple other bits. I remember despite being busy it was sinking right into me in the background. She's been doing stuff with Tim Heidecker recently too which is hella fuckin cool.

Proper big swell of profoundly affecting female songwriters in the last ten years. Lingua Ignota, Jessica Pratt, Susanne Sundfor, Aldous Harding and to a lesser extent Deradoorian with her criminally overlooked and exceptional album Expanding Flower Planet. Makes me very happy, the female voice is up there with the sound of percussion as the best ever shit to ever happen to music. I know that is a dumbass observation but that's just how I roll today.

Not dumbass at all, very much my feelings too :-)

I haven't heard Deradoorian....but i will now!

Head Gardener


grassbath

This is a great record, and very up my street. I do think the 'album of the decade' plaudits are a bit hyperbolic however. It's very well produced and arranged epic-sounding dream pop which owes a lot to 70s singer-songwriters, in keeping with the soft rock throwback that's seen the rise of Father John Misty, the Lemon Twigs etc. Great, not earth-shattering. I do think it's a huge step forward from her previous stuff though based on what I've heard.

Quote from: grassbath on September 12, 2019, 10:54:01 PM
This is a great record, and very up my street. I do think the 'album of the decade' plaudits are a bit hyperbolic however. It's very well produced and arranged epic-sounding dream pop which owes a lot to 70s singer-songwriters, in keeping with the soft rock throwback that's seen the rise of Father John Misty, the Lemon Twigs etc. Great, not earth-shattering. I do think it's a huge step forward from her previous stuff though based on what I've heard.

Inspired by maybe (among other influences), but this album is in no way a "soft rock throwback"

alan nagsworth

I think they meant that as a term of affection, not criticism. I can see the point. Aldous Harding's latest one is a lot like that but it's also far, far more to boot.


Dusty Substance


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIstaeDlf2A

Love her in this interview (less keen on the Canadian hippy interviewing her but apparently he's had some health issues so I won't be too nasty about him). Weyes Blood is elegant, charming and astute. She clearly knows her music history (mentions Syd Barrett and KLF) and it turns out her Dad once went out with Joni Mithcell which explains quite a bit.


grassbath

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on September 13, 2019, 01:31:41 AM
Inspired by maybe (among other influences), but this album is in no way a "soft rock throwback"

I said 'in keeping with.' Not meaning to diminish it. The album is produced by the bloke out of Foxygen who did the last Father John Misty album and I think one of the Twigs plays on it. At the moment it strikes me there's a fair bit of mining of that Hollywood Vampires era of the American music business - grandiose, auteurist studio attitude, the songwriter holed up hungover in an L.A. hotel room with a big collar and a grand piano. Even the Arctic Monkeys were at it on that last one. This album fits with that scene, though is in my opinion a lot more impressive and singular than other releases from the same stable.

a duncandisorderly

she was getting a lot of airtime on KXLU, which I listen to on the internets. I grew attached to the station after visiting it in 2002 to do a session- it seems to be run, quite badly, by students & pot-head grown-ups like our own host that night who'd forgotten to book a studio so we ended up playing in the other control room. anyway, their playlist policy is there isn't one, but there are chunks of their output that are clearly unattended, & there are bits where they have favourites. one such was our natalie, who I had to shazam as the 'DJ' was so inept. bought the lot over the course of the next few weeks. I hear the criticism, but her amazing pipes sell it regardless, & I've played the 'titanic' album dozens of times, along with the others. there are hints of macca in some of the arrangement & production, & at least one track has ringo-esque drum fills, while her voice is like a more confident karen carpenter.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Dusty Substance on September 15, 2019, 06:52:43 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIstaeDlf2A

She clearly knows her music history


Odd thing to say. Why wouldn't she? Especially given the particular style she performs owes a great deal to classic rock.

sevendaughters

oh she definitely knows her onions, on that p4k 'the song i wish i wrote' she went for a Hoagy Carmichael song fer chrissake. that LA scene she is sort of in and out of are deep nerds for real.

Head Gardener

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 17, 2019, 07:56:08 AM
that LA scene she is sort of in and out of are deep nerds for real.

cool, quite similar to Northampton then


checkoutgirl

Quote from: Head Gardener on September 12, 2019, 09:48:20 PM
the tune she did with Ariel Pink is fabulous too - Tears Of Fire

That's a fun tune.

Movies is very Involved strap yourself in type stuff. I'm rarely in the mood for that kind of thing these days. Perhaps further listens will reveal more lightness.


amoral

Recently discovered this album myself. Such lovely melodies and her voice is gorgeous. A little bit Karen Carpenter, a little bit Aimee Mann. There's something wonderfully familiar but also new about it.

Quote from: Dusty Substance on September 15, 2019, 06:52:43 PM
less keen on the Canadian hippy interviewing her but apparently he's had some health issues so I won't be too nasty about him

How can you be on the internet and not know Nardwuar? (and how can anyone not like Nardwuar?!)