Biography
Weyes Bluhd is good enough to inspire elaborate suicidal fantasies. That may seem like ridiculous blog hyperbole, but for a brief moment in the summer of 2006, it was truer than true. It was my first summer as a college student. I was living in a tiny but expensive walk-up in the LES, spiritually vacant and utterly depressed, making frequent trips to visit my girlfriend in Philadelphia where a small, committed group of artists were turning me on to the rich possibilities of DIY. There were a lot of great bands playing an endless variety of venues, but for my money, the cream of the crop was a young girl from Doylestown, PA (~45 minutes North of Philly) by the name of Natalie Mering.
On the Philly circuit, she was known as Wiseblood. Playing intimate, mostly house-set shows with the constantly evolving crew of Dark Juices (Jim Strong of Wrinkle, Floating Market; Jordan Burgis of The Furniture, Quantum Spine Recordings; many others), Mering thoroughly stoked the Philadelphia community. At that time, her music was a slab of melancholy folk with goosebump-inducing, butter-voiced melodies adorned by the Dark Juices’ mysterious amalgam of tape-collage, sonorous metallic objects and other unusual textures. In short, it killed, and it was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard in my 19 years on Earth (stick that in your hyperbole pipe). So much so, in fact, that after a performance at the now-defunct Haunted Cream Egg, I approached Mering with these words: “One day, I want you to be singing to me with a knife between your feet, cutting my throat as I die by your song.” Melodramatic, I know. I meant every word. (Ampeater)
On the Philly circuit, she was known as Wiseblood. Playing intimate, mostly house-set shows with the constantly evolving crew of Dark Juices (Jim Strong of Wrinkle, Floating Market; Jordan Burgis of The Furniture, Quantum Spine Recordings; many others), Mering thoroughly stoked the Philadelphia community. At that time, her music was a slab of melancholy folk with goosebump-inducing, butter-voiced melodies adorned by the Dark Juices’ mysterious amalgam of tape-collage, sonorous metallic objects and other unusual textures. In short, it killed, and it was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard in my 19 years on Earth (stick that in your hyperbole pipe). So much so, in fact, that after a performance at the now-defunct Haunted Cream Egg, I approached Mering with these words: “One day, I want you to be singing to me with a knife between your feet, cutting my throat as I die by your song.” Melodramatic, I know. I meant every word. (Ampeater)
