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  • Weyes Blood’s “Andromeda” Video Mirrors the Wistful, Leap-of-Faith Themes of the Song

    Weyes Blood’s “Andromeda” Video Mirrors the Wistful, Leap-of-Faith Themes of the Song

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    Not one to let a divine album like Titanic Rising fall into the forgotten category just because it’s been five years since its release, Weyes Blood has brought the record back to life (for fifth anniversary purposes) by releasing a video for “Andromeda.” Co-directed by Weyes (a.k.a. Natalie Mering), Ambar Navarro and Colton Stock, the three-pronged storyline follows the chanteuse as a mere mortal roaming the desert, an astronaut in space and some kind of “Queen of the Galaxy” riding an asteroid headed straight for Earth.

    As her desert self plods along aimlessly through the abyss of the landscape, she keeps trying to find some sign of life, putting her hand over her forehead in that way that serves as the universal symbol for: “looking for someone (or something).” Then, all at once, she sees that sign of life she was looking for: smoke billowing from an opening in a rock. Not quite a cave exactly, but a chasm. Briefly hopeful, Weyes Blood runs to the source of the smoke as the lyrics, “We all want something new/But can’t seem to follow through/Something’s better than nothing/Or so that I thought” play in the background (in a way, it’s kind of like the inverse sentiment behind the Spice Girls belting out, “Too much of something is bad enough/But something’s coming over me to make me wonder/Too much of nothing is just as tough”). These are fitting emotions for Weyes Blood to express based on her explanation of the song as a deep dive into the meaning, particularly for women, of that abstract concept known as “true love.” 

    As she told The Believer when Titanic Rising first came out, “True love in ‘Andromeda’ is kind of like this abstract thing to a woman who has accumulated a lot of negative experiences, and maybe not had a lot of support otherwise… There are a lot of wounds that a woman accumulates… That’s really hard to bring into a relationship—that is a total relationship killer. It’s a lot to ask somebody, of a man especially, to be like, ‘Can you please draw me out of my hardened shell and make me soft again?’ ‘Andromeda’ is a bit like that.”

    Not one to miss out on a bit of ironic humor with regard to the song’s wistfully romantic aura, it’s no coincidence that the word/name Andromeda applies to the Greek myth about the daughter of King Cepheus, ruler of Aethiopia, and husband to Cassiopeia. The latter, like Andromeda, also has a constellation named in her honor, even though it was Cassiopeia’s fault that Andromeda ended up needing to be sacrificed to Poseidon after claiming that she and her daughter were, like, way hotter than the sea nymphs known as the Nereids. Not one to take kindly to any shit-talking about daughters of the sea, Poseidon sent a sea monster (Cetus) to wreak havoc on the coast until Cepheus consulted his oracle and was told that the only way to stop the madness was to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster.

    Thus, she ended up bound to a rock in the middle of the sea, ostensibly doomed until she was saved by Perseus (a.k.a. Hercules’ great-grandfather), who happened to be flying by on Pegasus with the head of Medusa in his hand. And so, a germinal precursor to the conventional fairy tale was born. Not to mention loose inspiration for the reason why the “Queen of the Galaxy” version of Weyes Blood is set against the backdrop of brightly-burning white stars (or “balls of gas,” as Pumbaa would point out). 

    In the same abovementioned interview, Weyes Blood also added, “The Greek myth is that [Andromeda] is tied to a rock and she’s going to get ravaged by this sea monster and this guy has to come save her. There’s this hope to be saved, and it’s just a little too much to ask of people.” (*cough cough* modern men “experiencing their own masculinity crisis”). Or at least people of the current epoch, who are put-upon if you so much as try to actually talk to them on the phone. WB then continued, “Ultimately, at the end of the song, it’s like, you eventually just have to believe it’s real to make it real. It’s a lot to ask of the universe for something to just show up and blow your mind.” And yet, the minds of mere mortals were blown all the time before the advent of the internet tended to dull all sense of wonder once the initial novelty wore off. 

    As for the Earth-bound Weyes Blood in the video, the being she pulls from the “smoky hole” is cloaked in black and, in fact, seems to look a lot like Death himself. An interpretation that would make sense within the context of earthly creatures’ time being up if they keep going the way they are. Such imagery is, at times, seemingly in stark contrast to lyrics like, “Love is calling/It’s time to let it through/Find a love that will make you/I dare you to try.” The notion of love “making” a person, as though they’re being carved out of clay, might come across as more than slightly old-fashioned. Or, worse than that, adhering to the trite, Dean Martin-sanctioned adage, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.” But as Weyes Blood says, you’ll never find anything resembling so-called true love that will make you “somebody” unless you at least take a risk on “putting yourself out there.”

    By the same token, she keeps presenting the dichotomies of that ideal, having also remarked to The Believer, “…I’m married to my independence. I’m truly in love with my lack of attachment. For me, pursuing love—I don’t know to explain it. It’s almost like, needing an intimacy, needing a sense of love, but knowing that no one person is ever going to fulfill that blown out ideal that you’ve positioned yourself to believe in. Movie love. But I do think that there’s things that you can do if you want the movie love. Building the bedroom, making the milk and cookies or whatever. You can manifest it.” Ergo, her declarative chorus in “Andromeda.” 

    Beyond the “leap of faith” chorus, however, there are signs of her, let’s say, “cautious optimism” about love, as exemplified in another verse that goes, “Treat me right I’m still a good man’s daughter/Let me in if I break/And be quiet if I shatter.” To the point of being a “good man’s daughter,” WB also mentioned to The Believer, “[My dad] was very much a man of love and integrity. He made me feel very safe, so I wasn’t really prepared for the reality of the world, and men. I was taken advantage of, and manipulated, and had to walk around with some baggage.” So sure, obviously that would make a girl rather skittish about matters of the heart.

    As for the elemental motifs throughout the video—particularly when the “Queen of the Galaxy” crashes into Earth on an asteroid—it all goes back to Weyes Blood’s overarching message about climate change on the album. After all, she didn’t call it Titanic Rising for nothing. In another interview to promote the record when it first came out, she told Flood magazine, “The Titanic is a very symbolic tragedy of the hubris of man [there goes her “Greek myths mode” again], thinking we can conquer nature. It’s ironic that the Titanic would crash into an iceberg and sink, and now the icebergs are melting and sinking the third class of the world. They’re going to suffer at the expense of our wealth.” 

    Thus, there is a certain layered meaning to many of the lyrics on “Andromeda.” This includes, “Gettin’ tired of looking/You know that I hate the game/Don’t wanna waste any more time/You know I been holdin’ out.” On the one hand, it’s about the quest to find love. Yet, on the other, it applies so clearly to the way in which most residents of Earth have come to hate this game called capitalism, knowing full well it’s a dead-end road leading straight to a bad neighborhood where the outcome is certain death. And that, yes, all of us have been “holdin’ out” on what we’re capable of in order to effect any real change to avoid that proverbial neighborhood. The one we actually wouldn’t have to avoid if it weren’t for capitalism.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Get Caught in Caroline Polachek and Weyes Blood’s Ethereal “Butterfly Net”

    Get Caught in Caroline Polachek and Weyes Blood’s Ethereal “Butterfly Net”

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    Continuing the dreamy motifs presented on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek has given listeners another taste of one of the bonus tracks from her forthcoming deluxe edition of the album. And who better to help her with that task than the equally dreamy stylings of Weyes Blood? Assisting with a reworked version of track ten on the record, “Butterfly Net” (co-produced with Danny L Harle), Weyes Blood layers the sonic offering with her own rich vocals for an effect that’s altogether ethereal. 

    As part of the Everasking Edition of Desire…, Polachek chooses a fitting song to punctuate the date she’s choosing to re-release the record: Valentine’s Day. Just as she did the same for the original version of the record. On the remixed version of “Butterfly Net” (once again co-produced by Danny L Harle), there are marked distinctions. Not just because of Weyes Blood’s presence, but the entire reworked sound. Alone in Polachek’s hands, the song is actually less bittersweet, and more tinged with a Beth Orton vibe. The music, too, is more stripped down on the original. And while the remix might initially sound almost a capella, it builds toward a burst of decidedly 90s-inspired power ballad glory—but with a more acoustic emphasis.

    Toward the end of the three-minute mark, a repeated, siren-like chant speaks to the mermaid-esque cover art of the single. Displaying Weyes Blood and Polachek “caught” in what looks more like a fishing net than a butterfly net, positioned and aesthetically styled in such a way that it’s almost as though you can’t tell where one chanteuse begins and the other ends. This all being punctuated by a black background that lends a somber air to it, a note of finality. What’s more, the two look like something out of Lana Del Rey’s “Music to Watch Boys To” video (complete with their donning of headphones), you know, the underwater scenes that also got repurposed for the “Freak” video. 

    As a love song that speaks not to “being caught” by someone else, but rather, to trying to “catch [their] light,” it makes an ideal addition to the annals of “love gone wrong” tracks. Even if it is not as straightforward as other songs of that genre (e.g., Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River,” Eamon’s “Fuck It” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” among many other “love gone wrong” numbers by her). When Polachek and Weyes Blood sing in harmony, “There you were/With your mirror/Shining the world all over me/There I was/With my butterfly net/Trying to catch your light,” there is the implication that the song refers to two people who can never quite “align.” Whether that means emotionally or physically—or both—the result is the same: an unbearable poignancy. A keen sense of regret over not having been able to make something work. 

    Then again, some people can satisfy themselves with the idea that “at least” something was able to work out for a while, at a certain time and place in one’s life. Even if not “forever,” as the monogamist propaganda so often leads us to believe. Indeed, there’s a few other songs on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You that acknowledge the disconnect between romantic expectation versus reality. And yet, a song like “Fly to You” featuring Grimes and Dido explores the kind of love that is more resilient, able to bounce back from various fights and mood swings. Less lyrically abstract than “Butterfly Net,” Polachek asks on “Fly to You,” “Will you still love me after the bend?/Remember what’s gone before, not loaded with regret/Ooh, I fly to you/After all the tears, you’re all I need.” It’s a sharp contrast to the conceptual sentiments of “Butterfly Net,” especially with Polachek and Weyes Blood singing the lyrics, “Faithful inertia/Her bullet doesn’t slow/It seeks and finds me/How far it goes/Heaven help me/Take this bag of wings/And drown it in the Thames/And wake tomorrow/Hollow/Hardly forgetting.”

    These symbolic lyrics are also in contrast to another more exuberant song that leads up to the original “Butterfly Net,” “Blood and Butter.” And yet, Polachek still knows how to allude to the intermixed pain and pleasure of love as she croons, “Let me dive through your face to the sweetest kind of pain/Call you up/Nothing to say/No, I don’t need no entertaining/When the world/Is a bed” and “Look how I forget who I was/Before I was the way I am with you.” This latter statement can double as being either “good” or “bad.” Falling into the latter category when one loses their entire sense of identity in a relationship. 

    That Polachek chose “Butterfly Net” as the song from Desire… to rework (and not just because she had already performed it live a few times with Weyes Blood) seems telling of her, er, desire to return to a song that is more ambiguous about love everlasting (not everasking). On the one hand, it seems she’s saying that she has found the person who will “last,” manifest in the verse, “I collected stupid ashes/So that after you’d gone/I could hold onto somеthing/But you stayed unwavering/Through evеry false goodbye/Unsubsiding/Pining/For now and for never” (the “for never” being indicative of her unfaltering realism). On the other, some irrepressible part of her knows she should still continue to remain on her guard about falling fully prey to such notions, with Weyes Blood joining her for the bridge that goes, “Oh, if only/The umbrella of the sky/Could wrap us up and up/That’s where I’d zoom in close/Dilated as your eyes/Until then, I’ll keep it brief.” Then there is that oft-repeated line about trying to catch someone’s light, as though, instead, all they’re ever met with is a series of near misses while trapped in darkness (which is what the single’s cover art alludes to). 

    In effect, the re-release of “Butterfly Net” not only highlights the larger themes of Desire…, but also makes one realize that Polachek could easily add another bonus track to the Everasking Edition that provides a riff on The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” that goes, “‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony that’s love/Try to make someone want you forever/You’re a slave to the feeling then you get shoved.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Weyes Blood Conveys Guinevere/Meat Loaf Vibes in “Twin Flame” Video

    Weyes Blood Conveys Guinevere/Meat Loaf Vibes in “Twin Flame” Video

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    After already bringing us three music videos (“It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,” “Grapevine” and “Hearts Aglow”) from her fifth album, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, Weyes Blood reminds us to keep listening with her latest visual for “Twin Flame.” Directed by Ambar Navarro, “Twin Flame” differs from the more grimly surreal “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” and “Grapevine,” while being more fantastical than the “tour documentary” premise of “Hearts Aglow” (not totally unlike Lana Del Rey’s video for “Let Me Love You Like A Woman”).  

    As she did with “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,” Weyes Blood employs an animated sequence at the beginning of the romantic video. One that depicts a “savior-like” man on a horse galloping through the darkened woods as he heads toward a castle in the distance. One that’s entirely dark save for a lone flame in the top window, just beneath one of the spires. Then, with a single bolt of animated thunder, the video becomes live action as we see Weyes Blood staring out the window like a combination of Rapunzel and Guinevere, the latter being the regal, courtly medieval queen best known as “King Arthur’s wife” (and also portrayed in T. H. White’s famed fantasy trilogy about the king, The Once and Future King, which includes The Sword in the Stone). Both women have their own abduction stories, of course (for, in the lore of the medieval era, what purpose does a woman serve apart from being “stolen” and then rescued?). This being significant because of the Bluebeard’s Castle undercurrent that’s also at play in “Twin Flame.”

    But one other “figure” Weyes Blood channels in this particular narrative is Meat Loaf in the Michael Bay-directed “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),” itself borrowing heavily from the story tropes of Beauty and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera. Like Meat Loaf, Weyes Blood, too, wanders through a lonely, dark castle (in Meat Loaf’s case, his castle is the architectural modern equivalent: a mansion). The perfect setting for creating dramatic, striking tableaus, as Weyes Blood does by positioning herself at the center of many burning candelabra (Meat Loaf obviously loves the decorative cachet of candelabra as well) as smoke billows around her. Setting such a dramatic stage, she delivers the opening line, “And how I tried so hard to hide the pain/What bad temper we’re keeping/And so I followed a light into the night/And you kept me waiting in the dark with no place to hide.”

    Least of all from her true feelings for this twin flame of hers. The flame who has currently recoiled from the intensity of their love because he got “spooked” by it, therefore leaving Weyes Blood to roam through the castle like a lost soul as she carries a lone burning candle in her hand. The symbol of the “flame” she’s meant to represent as she waits for her twin soul to return. His absence has left her bereft and rudderless, prompting her to lament, “And I’m standing here laughing at my shame/‘Cause you’re my twin flame/You’re my twin flame/And you got me so cold/When you pull away.”

    Although the visuals might be decidedly “the 90s interprets medieval times,” the music itself is drenched in the moody sounds of 80s bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure. To that end, the witchy, “goth” portion of the video arrives about halfway through, when we see Weyes Blood seated at a small table with more lit candelabra positioned next to her, giving her an Elaine (Samantha Robinson) in The Love Witch aura. And clearly, there must be something magical about her for, just a few moments later, a set of keys materializes out of thin air in the palm of her hand. This is convenient since the corridor she’s walking through presents itself with a keyhole-sporting door. Although she peers through that keyhole before opening the door, nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to see inside. And this is when the video veers from “romantic” to “romantic-eerie.” This because, behind that locked door, are the skeletal remains of two humans. Shrieking in horror, Weyes Blood runs in the other direction as blood then begins pouring down the walls of the dungeon. 

    As to who these people might have been, it can either be looked at as: they were two twin flames themselves who died together in the castle or, like Weyes Blood, they were the bereaved single flames awaiting their twin flame to rescue them from their misery. Or, the third option: Weyes Blood is actually trapped in a music video version of Bluebeard’s Castle. Whatever the case, it’s little consolation to an already emotionally-beleaguered Weyes Blood. Indeed, she seems to be so affected that her heart becomes, what else, aglow (because this is the And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow universe, and we’re just living in it). After which, things get even more bruja-oriented as blood spills onto a book, a seemingly ceremonial goblet (a prop Meat Loaf is also fond of using in “I Would Do Anything For Love [But I Won’t Do That]”) is knocked over and ripped pages start fluttering wildly throughout the room. 

    The supernatural element to the video is, to be sure, intended to play up how powerful having a twin flame can be (even if he’s a Bluebeard). Though not everyone is lucky (or unlucky, depending on who you ask) enough to find that romantic twin. As Weyes Blood stands her ground amid the sorcery-based tempest, a glittery-esque “magic dust” starts to cover elements of the natural world outside: butterflies, snails and a flower. And yes, things get très supernatural during the denouement of “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” as Meat Loaf’s own “twin flame” (portrayed by Dana Patrick), while sitting on a luxurious “daybed,” proceeds to levitate with it into the air. This is as Meat Loaf sits in much the same position as Weyes Blood at her small “witch’s” table filled with candles. Because, perhaps without even realizing it, Meat Loaf was highlighting the twin flame analogy here, too. Complete with an opening title card that reads: “I have traveled across the universe through the years to find her. Sometimes going all the way is just a start…”

    Weyes Blood’s journey echoes that sentiment, particularly when recalling that the video opens with an animated “white knight” on a horse galloping toward the castle. And, though we don’t see him show up later on in the video, one can still dare to dream that Weyes Blood’s conclusion with her twin flame can be as happy as the one Meat Loaf gets to experience by the end of his narrative. Then again, Meat Loaf tapped a Hollywood director for the video, so of course it would get a Hollywood ending. In which case, Weyes Blood might be showing us the reality of the outcome when you find and lose your twin flame: you end up going a little bit mad inside a fortress. The one you also built up on an emotional level to protect yourself from any further pain.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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