Weyes Bluhd
Strange Chalices of Seeing

THE REVIEW

This album is TERRIFYING.

It's been haunting me since last night, and I have to break my rule to talk about it, to vent somehow.

Forget the psychedelic Folk version of Weyes Blood; forget the baroque and sentimental Pop of "Titanic Rising," considered by critics and fans as one of the albums of 2019. Here Natalie Mering was still called Weyes Bluhd, she had the recklessness and madness of a 19-year-old on her side and, after her time with Jackie-O Motherfucker, she began her solo career composing the soundtrack of nightmares and horror.

A spectral, haunting, and unnerving Drone - Dark Ambient base on which echoes, chimes, howls, and mysterious whispers overlay; Natalie's lush soprano voice never unfolds but sometimes emerges to spell out dark litanies, flashes of cursed Folk, hallucinated lullabies like "Ballad of the Broken Skull," with its climax that makes you feel eaten alive. "Strange Chalices of Seeing" is hypnotic, ruthless, incredibly challenging; it ends up possessing you, spreading malignantly inside you. It is extremely rare for an album to have oppressed and nauseously fascinated me in this way; I could cite early Sonic Youth: in the tribal "Ice Age," some clear echoes of "Protect Me You" are heard.

A simulacrum of the aura of this album will also pervade the subsequent "The Outside Room," but Weyes Blood will never do anything like this again...

After finishing listening to the album in the evening, in the dark, all in one go, with my gaze fixed on the black cat, I was shaken by shivers that continued for two hours; in the darkness of my house, I feared seeing demons and spirits, I felt followed, and while climbing the stairs I saw myself in my mind like this. I had bad dreams, now I'm out of breath...

Wait until night falls, and click on the video... enjoy listening...