Weyes Blood and The Dark Juices

Weyes Blood and The Dark Juices
The Outside Room (2011, Not Not Fun)

Natalie Mering (Weyes Bluhd/Jackie-O Motherf*cker) presents a compelling debut solo LP of forlorn “narcotic drifter ballads” for NNF. ‘The Outside Room’ is like a haunting acid flashback to late ’60s Nico, only distorted by time and a drug-degraded memory. Undeniably her vocals bear a genuinely uncanny resemblance to the folk-pop heroine, a fact doubtless enforced by her musical morphosis from murky FX riddled experiments as Weyes Bluhd towards death-folk guitars, doom-laced drums and stark ambience.

But it’s possibly the final mix and recording from The Shadow Ring’s Graham Lambkin which really brings her songs into bleakly spacious relief. However, it’s not like she’s totally abandoned her old sound, it’s just been rendered in a different, yet more sepulchral light and with more space to swoon and float between her ghostly words. Most notably, her anachronistic style really stands out from the warped, sideways futurism of NNF’s current crop, and feels far more like some exhumed classic. Includes 11 x 17” lyric sheet and ace artwork by Mering herself.