Sometimes it’s hard to believe music being performed in front of you is real. That’s the case with Weyes Blood. We first spotted her at CMJ last year and she quickly jumped to the top of our Non-Boston Bands You Need To Know list with her combination of gothic folk and eerie electronics. Her words hang in the air with a frigid truth, carrying both the heaviness of death and the lightness of resolution, and we couldn’t get them out of our head for weeks to come. It’s just simple enough to fall asleep to but dark enough to stay in the corners of your mind.
Her sophomore album, The Innocents, came out last year to critical acclaim and Weyes Blood is now heading out on tour to let those songs see some sunshine. Before hitting Boston, she talked with us about touring Europe as a teenager, the fears of playing emotional music onstage, and why she loves the Titanic soundtrack so much. Make sure to head over to T.T. the Bear’s this Wednesday night to hear her songs take flight live.
Allston Pudding: Your mainstream career started when touring with experimental band Jackie-O Motherfucker. You’ve been in the game for a long time. Is that where things started?
Weyes Blood: It was before then. I started playing shows in 2005 when I was 15. I worked at a record store before and started playing shows in Philly, the city I lived closest to.
AP: Were these solo shows?
WB: Yeah. I used to book shows, like hardcore shows, in my town before that. It was easy to start booking shows for myself because of that.
AP: Wait, were you playing in hardcore lineups?
WB: Yeah, I played some weird shows with louder bands, for sure. That was all that was going on in my town.
AP: So were people receptive?
WB: Generally. It was pretty interesting because I was so vulnerable and it was so raw. Sometimes I would improvise half of it. Nobody had heard me sing before, too, but they liked my voice. It was a mixed response. It was acoustic guitar and singing, so basically folk music.
AP: When did you transition to playing with others.
WB: I joined the Jackie-O Motherfucker tour, but we didn’t actually play together very long. They just asked me to join them on their tour in Europe. Do you know Tom Greenwood? Well, he was really crazy. Touring with him was really fun. I was 19 at the time and it was the first tour I had ever been on, so I was on cloud nine the whole time. Getting your first tour to be in Europe? It was awesome. Tom was a total crazy man, though. One night he got so drunk and forgot that he put his guitar onstage that he blamed everybody for stealing his guitar. He went into the green room and totally trashed it. I had booked a solo tour to start after that one and the people I was going to tour with were at the show and pulled me aside, like, ‘Dude, if you want to leave this crazy tour and come with us now, you can.’ At the time, I figured I would do that so it didn’t seem like I was hanging out with this madman, but the truth is I was never mad at him. It was more enticing to hang out with these other people. I ended up not going to Finland with them because of it. Me and Tom Greenwood are on great terms, though. I’m a fan of what he does and his style. Most nights were totally improvised. It was free music, so it’s very different from what I do now.
AP: Did it help you at all when it came time to record your stuff?
WB: Not really, but it did help me learn what it’s like to go on tour with an established band. Like, oh, this is what it feels like to be on a good tour. These are the guarantees you get.
AP: When it came time to record your own material, did you do a lot of home recordings first or were you eager to hop in the studio?
WB: I self-released a lot of CDs. There’s a lot of unreleased stuff, too. I came out with my first record on Not Not Fun in 2010. That was The Outside Room.
AP: That record has a lot of drone and layering on it, but the newer record, The Innocents, is much more cleaned up. Did you want to ditch that sound or were you just interested in trying out a new style?
WB: Just trying stuff out. I don’t know if I like the cleaned-up sound so much. It was really fun to record and try out, and there’s aspects of that I like–when the vocals are clean and everything is audible with a big cinematic sound–but ultimately I like using sound effects. I didn’t mix the record that just came out. Someone else did. It was the first time I ever worked with other people. I learned a lot, but I think in the end I like working alone and I look forward to doing it all myself on my next record.
AP: On both records, you do a great job of layering Gothic folk with electronic instruments. Often times it seems like they wouldn’t go together but you blend them rather seamlessly Is there an order you go about recording the two?
WB: It’s all about listening. If you hear you’re experimenting with something or a melody or you’re hamming a sound effect along a melody, you manipulate it until it’s working. Usually I start with a melody in my head since sound effects are really hard to reproduce.
AP: Are there instances of that on The Innocents?
WB: The synth sounds are sequential extractions that I really thought out and enjoy the way it sounds. The drum sound on “Land of Broken Dreams” is a drum trigger with a delay that I was specifically seeking after hearing it in my head first.
AP: A lot of it reminds me of film soundtracks. Have you ever thought about getting into that field?
WB: Absolutely. I would love to. I was really into film scores growing up. I listened to them just as much as pop music. The Titanic soundtrack, not even the Celine Dion song. It wasn’t even that great compared to that Irish flute stuff and the dark sinking music. The Braveheart soundtrack. Enya, which is soundtrack-like.
AP: Now that you’re grown up, do you still think you’re innocent? Is that where the album title comes from?
WB: Not anymore, but I used to be. It’s about being innocent and then no longer being that.
AP: So is this album a process of growing through that or out of it?
WB: Yes, totally.
AP: A lot of the tracks seem pretty heavy, emotion-wise. Do you revisit these topics when you’re onstage? Do they bog you down or get in the way?
WB: No, I always think of new events with similar feelings. I don’t think about the old things. Similar struggles but in a recent version help me. Sometimes it gets ambiguous, because as you get older, it’s hard to get obsessed about something specific anymore.
AP: Is it hard, opening yourself up like that?
WB: Oh, it’s so hard. It’s humiliating. It’s super hard, but I’m used to it at this point. It can get to me sometimes, but I have it under control now. It depends on how hard you’re hitting it. If you feel like you’re not hitting a stride, it’s easy to get crazy tunnel-vision about a show being bleak. If you have technical difficulties, you have to be strong. Usually audiences don’t notice little things like that, but I’m sensitive to those things. That’s the hardest part. I don’t mind being vulnerable to people, just messing up.
AP: It sounds like you don’t get nervous anymore.
WB: No, not really. Sometimes I wish I got more nervous, now. I miss that paralyzed fear. It usually extracts a really intense performance. Whenever you play a situation where people aren’t there to see you, at a festival or something, it’s scary. Especially when you play to people who don’t care, who don’t like alternative music or something. I really like playing for older people. I feel like I get the best performance when I’m plying for middle age and up, which is so rare. It creates a different quality in my music. It’s not a feeling I’m used to, performing for people in that age range.
AP: Why do you think that’s more comfortable?
WB: It’s not that it’s more comfortable, per say, but it makes me try harder. I’m a young person who goes to shows so I know what it’s like to be a young crowd who’s like, ‘Oh, whatever.’ There’s something about older people, maybe they’re more critical, that makes me try harder. I have to make it palatable to them in a way. For young people, anything goes. For an older crowd, that’s not usually the case. It’s a strange thing, playing to people, but I love doing it, comfortable or not.