Even when Natalie Mering is wallowing in doom and gloom – or being “in the thick of it”, as she puts it herself – the soothing familiarity of her voice somehow makes it seem like everything will be alright. The American musician’s fourth album follows her 2019 breakthrough Titanic Rising, which had a loose concept of witnessing imminent calamity.
This, the second, is imbued with a sense of muddling through adversity, with lyrics like “It’s been a long strange year, everyone said they lost what they thought they had / We lost our voices” and “We don’t know where we’re going / Looking for love in all the wrong places” typifying Mering’s mood. Happily, her musical style hasn’t been overhauled in a drastic manner. Carpenters comparisons persist, while many of these songs are mini-epics running over six minutes.
Mering throws a few curveballs in the mix: God Turn Me Into a Flower’s meditative, hymnal quality perhaps reflects her strict religious upbringing, but the cumbersome synthpop of Twin Flame seems misplaced. Nevertheless, the idea of a third instalment of her ambitious concept is enticing. Lauren Murphy is a freelance journalist and broadcaster. She writes about music and the arts for The Irish Times