Shouts of “I love you!” echoed through the sold-out Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever on Thursday night, and the object of those cheers from fans, Natalie Mering — aka Weyes Blood — returned them in kind and in song.
On the eve of the release of her new album “Titanic Rising,” Weyes Blood gave the crowd an intimate and rapturous experience full of lively banter and livelier music. Highlights from the new album included “Wild Time” (“You know it is a wild time to be alive,” she said), “A Lot’s Gonna Change,” “Andromeda, “Something to Believe” and “Movies.” In introducing the latter, she said, “The next one is about something we all enjoy … and, no, it’s not love-making, it’s movies.”
And speaking of reeling the crowd in, later she said, “This next song is a cover and it is about God.” The crowd responded with a less than whole-hearted cheer. Mering then laughed and added, “It is called ‘God Only Knows.’”
Mering told the crowd that she had a lot of friends in the audience, including Brian D’Addario of Lemon Twigs (who helped to produce her new album) and his girlfriend Anastasia Sanchez of Pinky Pinky, as well as Chris Tomson of Vampire Weekend.
She closed the show with a solo rendition of “Bad Magic” from her 2014 album “The Innocents.”