Weyes Blood released a trippy new video for “Wild Time” while announcing a new album scheduled for 2021.
The California singer-songwriter, real name Natalie Mering, directed the video herself, shot on 16mm film prior to the pandemic. The clip features Mering performing the Titanic Rising track in the mountains, sitting cross-legged and strumming her acoustic guitar. She bathes in the river with some friends, who later douse themselves with paint.
In an open letter to fans, Mering claimed that the song was about “yearning for wildness and Mother Nature in a time of chaos.” She also confirmed that her 2020 tour has been canceled due to the coronavirus, but no matter: She’s already working on a follow-up to Titanic Rising, slated for 2021.
Mering released Titanic Rising in April 2019, a record that tackled themes of climate change, isolation and the impending doom for millennials. “I think a lot of people are living in a state of millennial burnout, trying to keep up with something that nobody really fully understands yet,” she told Rolling Stone. Read Mering’s full letter below.
Good day everyone,
Here is a video for my song “Wild Time” that was shot on 16mm pre-Pandemic, then edited together during isolation. Felt like the right time to let this video out into the world, seeing as we’re all getting saddled down by some pretty grim realities. This song is about yearning for wildness and Mother Nature in a time of chaos. It’s for sensitive people who worry about the fate of humanity and feel powerless to do anything about it.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking apocalyptic thoughts and realizing that won’t get you anywhere. What if the world has always been ending? What if the sprawl of our cities are just as wild as the forests? What if climate change and the destruction of our natural habitat is a reflection of the nature within us, however sublimely horrifying and hard to understand? We’re animals, we play out a very precarious drama of life, and we grasp for what’s left of the protective womb – but maybe the notion that we’re somehow separated from her is an illusion. Maybe it is, truly, a wild time to be alive. Maybe getting in touch with that as a culture and society would avert the worst-case scenarios of ecological crisis and existential dread.
If you’ve gotten this far, wow, thank you for actually taking the time to read this. In other news, as you may have assumed, I am canceling all of my headline shows for 2020, but I’m beginning to work on my next album that will come out in 2021 — a different time, when hopefully we can see each other face to face once again.
xo
Natalie (a.k.a. Weyes Blood)
