NEW ALBUM
out oct 14, on Brainfeeder
https://louiscole.lnk.to/qualitySC

Technological fatigue. Narcissism anxiety. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Sub Pop Records). 

The album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019’s best.)  Where Titanic was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. “We’re in a fully functional shit show,” Mering says. “My heart is a glow stick that’s been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.”

And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome “It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody” — about the interconnectivity of all beings, but also the fraying of society around us. “I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper isolation kept coming up,” Mering says. “Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.”

Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like “Grapevine” chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge “God Turn Me into a Flower” serves as an allegory about our collective hubris. “The Worst Is Done” is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. 

“Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order,” she says. “These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment.”

In the mid 2000s, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens said he was going to make on album for all 50 US states, but he gave up after 2 albums because he's a coward. In March of 2020, I banded together with the goofs of the internet while under quarantine to finish this project once and for all. 

- My name is Joey Clift! I'm a comedy writer and I picked up the ball Sufjan Stevens was too scared to carry and took it all the way to the endzone with help from hundreds of people. Follow me on twitter here - https://twitter.com/joeytainment

- First 26 Albums Released on 4/16/20
- 14 More Albums (+2 EPs) Released 5/4/20
- Final 10 States Released: 5/27/20

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