Weyes Blood & Molly Lewis.
Written and shot by Eva Lynch
March 7th, 2023
Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
Molly Lewis
Molly Lewis takes the stage and the crowd goes quiet. The singer is in a floor length red bejeweled dress and illuminated by a series of simple blue backlights amidst the set of for Weyes blood. The charisma flowed right off of her as it felt like a jazz performance you’d see in a small lounge show, and for good reason.
The 33-year old has been whistling since she was a child and has been turning heads since her early 20s. These days she can most likely been found performing at her Los Angeles lounge show, Café Molly, where she’s played with the likes of MacDeMarco and John C. Reilly. In 2015, she even took home first place in the women’s live-band division at the Masters of Musical Whistling tournament. She flawlessly carries her tunes in a sultry yet playful jazz tone, making sweeping gestures as she whistles away - clearly focused while simultaneously looking at-home and relaxed on stage,
interacting with the crowd with great charisma.
Before going into her song “Dolphinese,” she jokes that most people probably don’t speak the language or know what she’s saying unless they’re dogs or dolphins, and talks about how she still tries to convey her stories through the sounds and tones of her whistle. People were cheering along as she hit new ranges of high pitch whistles and clearly enjoyed a performance, the likes of which I definitely have never seen before.
Weyes Blood
Once Lewis left the stage, the candelabras were dusted off and flickered on as we watched Weyes Blood slowly emerge and take the stage, in a long, white, form-fitting gown and accompanying cape which was draped around her neck and flowed all the way to the floor. Natalie Mering has been performing under some variation of the name Weyes Blood since as early as 2003, but really came into the spotlight with her 2019 album, Titanic Rising, which dealt with the disillusionment and distress caused by modern realities like social media algorithms, climate change, and mass
consumerism.
The Santa Monica-born singer is known for her folky and ethereal voice which shows influences of Patsy Cline, Joni Mitchell and Carol King, which shines through in songs like “Children of the Empire,” where her gentle range is inescapable. Her vintage sound and folk-driven message offers an escape away from the world and our worries
for a moment, welcoming us into her fantasy realm.
True to the name of her tour, Holy Flux, the whole performance felt elegant and religious as she moved around the stage, bathed in a warm light. Weyes Blood is no stranger to Montreal and mentioned having been up to Montreal many times, saying she used to come up to Montreal to play ‘grubby noise shows’ for McGill kids, yet this is her
first time back since 2019. She had a great banter with the crowd and after her well-known hit ‘Andromeda,’ she jokingly asked if Montreal was into astrology and said that she's on a campaign to slander astrology because she jokes that no one can safely go on dates anymore and now tells people she’s a Sagittarius by choice just to spite them.
The singer kept joking about how the next song would get the rave going, maybe turn to her noise roots and switch up the pace, yet evidently each song was as graceful as the last, incorporating elements of piano, harp and chimes yet still with a heavy base and vibration which had people swaying in time with her. For her song, “God Turned Me
Into A Flower,” she paired up with BBC’s Adam Curtis to create a series of visuals which played behind her and embodied the natural elements of the song, as she vocalized in an emotional and almost religious-sounding series of vocal runs, and felt exemplary of the message in her music and beliefs.
The visuals and imagery of the performance was highly symbolic, and completely embodied her latest album And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow. Towards the end of her set, during “Twin Flame,” the synthetic heart featured on her album cover began to glow through the dress and illuminate the dress for the rest of the night.
And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow explores storytelling in the face of societal collapse and explores how, as she said in an interview with Above The Fold, ‘Our myths and religions and stories exist to help us digest the paradox of our existence. To transcend, and make something out of the pain.’ The album turns to empathy and gentleness, in the face of humanity’s tech-driven disinterest in the future and existential threats. She left her heart on the stage and I think it’s safe to say Montreal feels grateful to have witnessed it.
