Weyes Blood: And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (digital outlets)

Few careers have had quite the interesting trajectory and sidesteps as that of Natalie Mering, known as Weyes Blood.

Now 34, she grew up in California and Pennsylvania with her Pentecostal parents (“born-again weirdos”), dropped out of college, relocated to California and New Mexico before washing up in Portland, Oregon where she joined the experimental psychedelic folk band Jackie-O Mother****er as bassist.

Back in California she self-released her 2007 debut album Strange Choices of Seeing (as Weyes Bluhd, after the title of Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood) and it's gloomy, acid-folk 2011 follow-up The Outside Room.

None of which anticipated her elegantly cinematic, critically acclaimed 2019 Titanic Risingalbum which wrapped personal concerns, mythology and the ecological crises in gorgeous pop arrangements.

And that didn't alert us to her covering Linda Ronstadt's country-rock hit You're No Good for the recent movie Minions: The Rise of Gru, the song produced by Lorde, Taylor Swift and Lana Del Ray co-writer/producer Jack Antonoff.

Perhaps that Ronstadt song accounts for this beguiling new album going to number two on the US Americana charts, although it bears scant resemblance to the country artists lodged there.

Again Mering alchemises songwriters like Harry Nilsson and the late 60s Beach Boys, echoes of Karen Carpenter and Joni Mitchell, and seductive atmospheres on this second in a proposed trilogy after Titanic Rising.

The opener It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody lifts off from Nilsson's effortless way of unfurling a melody, on Children of the Empire and the gently rolling The Worst is Done she sounds like Carpenter in the studio with Brian Wilson and the Wrecking Crew session musicians. In fact, much of this rhapsodic pop was recorded in the same Los Angeles' studio as the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

However as with Brian Eno's recent, sumptuous ForEverAndEverNoMore, there's serious intent within the transcendent melodies.

Mering again considers where we're at and headed, and it isn't promising: “We've all become strangers, even to ourselves” on that sublime opener; “Trying to break away from the mess we made. We don't have time anymore to be afraid” on Children of the Empire.

In the irresistible pop of The Worst is Done she sings, “They say the worst is done and it's time to go out . . . But I think the worst has yet to come, we're all so cracked after that”.

This is ambitious music, Mering often working alone before inviting in high-profile assistance: here are a string quartet; again Nilsson/Todd Rundgren-influenced retro-pop brothers Michael and Brian D'Addario (Lemon Twigs); Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) on orchestrating synths for the holy atmosphere of God Turn Me Into a Flower . . .

Amidst this, the ever-ascending ballad Hearts Aglow is a sublime song of hope: “The whole world is crumbling, let's dance in the sand 'cause I've been waiting for my life to begin. For someone to light up my heart again”.

Despite the unease, this album has that illuminating quality.

A late entry in best of the year lists.

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