Description
Natalie Mering’s fourth album is a grand, sentimental ode to living and loving in the shadow of doom. It’s also her most ambitious and complex work yet. Titanic Rising approaches modern-day problems through a distinctly sentimental lens. Mering has referred to herself as a “nostalgic futurist,” and here she leans into that title by examining the strange ways technology has shaped modern romance through the earnest lyrics and golden, gigantic arrangements of 1970s pop songwriters. But unlike Joni Mitchell or the Carpenters, whose love affairs were clouded by plain old anxiety and desperation, Mering’s love affairs are clouded by algorithms.
“An album is like a Rubik’s Cube,” she says. “Sometimes you get all the dimensions—the lyrics, the melody, the production—to line up. I try to be futuristic and ancient at once, which is a difficult alchemy. It’s taken a lot of different tries to get it right.” As concept-album as it may sound, it’s also a devoted exercise in realism, occasionally bordering on magical.
But at the end of the day, Titanic Rising is a new thing, her own stamp on the world. Like all the best musicians and songwriters before her, she’s plumbed the depths of her imagination and brought forth a masterpiece from the depths.
