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Nov 18, 2022Like our planet, this album is a rare thing of wonder.
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Nov 16, 2022By being pliable, open and more tender, Mering seems to suggest, perhaps we can save ourselves from the doom that this stunning record finds itself gripped within.
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Nov 21, 2022Magnificently composed, Weyes Blood reaches out to cast your loneliness away. Feeling like a timeless classic, this record is one that you can revisit whenever you want to hear the comforting sounds of another soul trying to figure it all out.
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Nov 18, 2022Her storytelling eye is sharp and her ear is honed to bring the most out of it melodically and instrumentally (with a tipped hat to Jonathan Rado’s excellent production). ... She is a torch bearer for our times.
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Nov 18, 2022Weyes Blood’s And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is a revelatory baroque pop album forged in these recent chaotic days.
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Nov 17, 2022Every so often, this imperative to speak big-tent truths can become strained and make her lyrics frustratingly vague, as on “Children of the Empire” (“we tend to live long, that’s why so many things go wrong”), but that song’s gorgeous vocal melody and Mering’s impassioned performance lift it beyond its limitations.
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Nov 16, 2022Musically, In the Darkness is perhaps her grandest, most elegant work to date—a perfect culmination of her past experimentalism and deep devotion to graceful melodies that lift from the deepest parts of the soul up to the heavens.
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Nov 15, 2022Mering has concocted a successor to Titanic Rising that any gambler worth their salt would have no doubt taken the under on. That Mering topped her own prior masterwork is its own reward and one we are no doubt not worthy of.
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UncutNov 14, 2022Her voice alone is worth preserving humanity for, hitting peaks of gorgeous, sleek torment on the cosmic beauty of "A Given Thing". [Dec 2022, p.36]
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Nov 18, 2022The rhythms are stately and unsyncopated. The arrangements are lushly orchestral. The songs are mostly around six minutes long, proceeding at the unhurried pace of guided meditations. And, perhaps owing to the sense of communion-via-solitude espoused in the first track, the lyrics are concerned with “we” nearly as often as they are with “I”.
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Jan 26, 2023And in the Darkness Hearts Aglow is already a formidable amalgam. It will be interesting to see where the third volume of the trilogy takes Weyes Blood.
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Jan 3, 2023As these elegant tracks play out, mourning what we’re doing to ourselves and each other, there is just the merest disappointment that the sound of these songs is not as overwhelming as those of this album’s magnificently echoey predecessor, Titanic Rising. But quietude becomes these themes.
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The WireDec 16, 2022Fans of retro-styled chamber pop should find the vibes here to be exquisite. That said, Mering cleverly balances the sumptuousness with a lyrical orientation that taps into a universal melancholy, cutting through the fog of nostalgia with a sober, contemporary sensibility. [Jan 2023, p.74]
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Dec 8, 2022Her writing registers with crisp clarity, cutting to the bone of the themes she is excavating. What might be cheap and exhausting in the hands of a lesser artist feels frequently cathartic, an exorcism that is honest about its central challenges but hopeful about our ability to transcend them.
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Nov 30, 2022And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is a rich, nuanced and brilliant reflection of a world in turmoil.
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Nov 17, 2022A beautifully wrought pop record that grapples with the disquiet hanging over the globe.
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Nov 17, 2022Whatever havoc the pandemic may have wreaked on Mering’s already gloomy outlook, it’s done nothing to spoil her melodic facility. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow gently bombards you with one fantastic tune after another.
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Nov 17, 2022And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is another step forward for Weyes Blood, building on the stunning sonic and emotional environments she tailored on Titanic Rising and using that lushness as a means of processing destabilized times.
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Nov 17, 2022There’s a little electronic noodling going on to remind us that, though Mering sounds supremely grounded, a part of her is still in exiled orbit around a damaged world. It’s soulful, and a little spooky.
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Nov 16, 2022The music is the same gorgeous blend of folk-rock in the vein of Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks as on previous albums, and indeed, many of the song titles, such as ‘Children of the Empire’, feel lifted from the dusty cover of a forgotten LP of ballads.
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Nov 14, 2022And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow again shows Mering's most extraordinary craft. [Dec 2022, p.82]
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Nov 14, 2022The pandemic is the ghost at the feast, lyrics dotted throughout about the deep personal upheaval we have all endured both publicly and privately these past two years. Penultimate track The Worst Is Done lifts up the mood with wistful optimism, setting up the stage for the third and final album of this heart-rending saga.
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Nov 17, 2022Mering sounds like she feels cornered by the current state of things and unsettled about our future. It is a testament to her skill and vision as a musician that she can make such circumstances sound so good.
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Nov 17, 2022In many ways, it’s the perfect soundtrack to a world struggling to emerge from a pandemic. ... If there’s a criticism to be had, it’s that it all sometimes seems a bit cold.
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Nov 14, 2022Though rose-colored, its sentiments don’t feel cheap because Mering’s buttery vibrato and earnest vocal performance ably convey the necessity of accepting a lack of assurance about the future while embracing temporary comfort.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 71 out of 76
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Mixed: 2 out of 76
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Negative: 3 out of 76
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Nov 18, 2022
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Nov 18, 2022Great album the vocals, instruments and the production are phenomenal lived up to my expectations highly recommend
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Nov 19, 2022I will just say one thing: Natalie Mering is an artist with a very high IQ.