From the moment those piano chords serene­ly chime as the open­ing track on Titan­ic Ris­ing gen­tly departs, you’re instan­ta­neous­ly trans­port­ed to those arrange­ments Richard Car­pen­ter used to craft for his sis­ter Karen. And the album that fol­lows com­fort­ably deliv­ers on that promise, and then some.

This is the sort of sophis­ti­cat­ed, grown-up and unashamed­ly roman­tic pop music that the Brill Build­ing churned out with such appar­ent effort­less­ness. The melodies of Burt Bacharach and the lyrics of Hal David were the per­fect fit for Richard’s lush orches­tra­tion and Karen’s tran­scen­dent vocals. 

Car­ole King became the Brill Building’s most suc­cess­ful grad­u­ate when she moved out to pur­sue a solo career. Her 1971 album, Tapes­try, sold over 25 mil­lion copies, as she merged those per­fect­ly craft­ed, clas­sic pop songs with the intro­spec­tion and doubts of the new­ly emer­gent singer songwriter.

And Natal­ie Mer­ing, whose forth album this is in the guise of Weyse Blood, is very much con­tin­u­ing here where King left off. If any­thing, Mer­ing cuts even more of an impres­sive fig­ure. Car­ole King, after all, was aid­ed in her endeav­ours by some won­der­ful lyri­cists. Mer­ing is doing all of this on her own. 

The result is a col­lec­tion of per­son­al, ques­tion­ing songs that recall Hunky Dory era Bowie, but which are giv­en the sort of orches­tral, soar­ing majesty that only a Bri­an Wil­son or a Phil Spec­tor would have attempt­ed to produce.

The album gets a suit­ably impressed 8.5 from the boys from Pitch­fork, here. And you can see the offi­cial video to Every­day, here, and you can hear that beguil­ing open­ing track A lot’s gonna change, here.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!