Weyes Blood plays at 9:30 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Bishop as part of a string of tour dates performing alongside solo musician Try the Pie and indie rock outfit Waxahatchee, a solo project by Katie Crutchfield, who is headlining the tour. Attendees must be 18 or older.
Mering recently moved to New York’s Rockaway Beach, and she said the neighborhood’s recent influx of musicians offered some inspiration, but she was also influenced by the area’s physical features.
“It’s a little bit dystopian, but kind of paradisiacal at the same time,” she said. “I played with that a little bit. It’s kind of paradise but in an urban decay setting.”
For “Cardamom Times,” Mering, 27, also decided to forgo the full-budget indie rock production of her preceding LP, 2014’s “The Innocents.” She said she realized she felt more comfortable returning to home-recording methods typical of her roots in DIY music scenes.
Though she said she could see herself returning to higher-budget production in the future, home recording also gave her the opportunity to be in complete command of the process.
“As much as I was directing everything that went down on ‘The Innocents,’ it felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen,” she said. “... (With home recording), you don’t have any weird suggestions floating around where people have ideas about what you should sound like.”
Whereas “The Innocents” offered diverse instrumentation and warped sounds, she chose to pull back on “Cardamom Times,” with songs largely anchored by spare acoustic guitar or organ.
She said her current work takes a similar approach — she’ll record another album in 2016, which will sound “kind of like the EP but with drums” – but she’s also focusing on increasingly complex songwriting.
Part of that, Mering said, is a lyrical shift. Though she said all four tracks on “Cardamom Times” focus on love — from friendship to intense romance — she’s become more interested in broader social themes. She’s seen those ideas dominate what she said she considers the most interesting indie music coming out recently, made exclusively by women.
“It seems like women are kind of infinitely more progressed right now than any dude,” she said. “Dudes are still being sarcastic and making slacker music, which I totally enjoy. And then there’s some guys who are putting their heart into writing really heartfelt songs, and that I really enjoy. But I kind of feel like women are kind of doing this artistic avant garde — bringing in the cutting edge and talking about society in their songs.”
Mering said she’s enjoyed seeing other women who feel the same way she does — women who grew up bored with the idea of being supporting players in musical contexts — take control of their own artistic agency and find success. She said she hopes the indie music world will continue to work in favor of women by letting them express progressive ideas in increasingly progressive musical contexts.
“I just want to see things get crazy, as in, like, revolutionary and interesting and saying a lot about society in the world and not too nostalgic, not too sarcastic,” she said. “I want to see stuff that’s really sincere and also kind of feels like rebellious. I like rebellion in music.”
