Gig review: Weyes Blood at O2 Academy Leeds

“We’re going to play sad songs for you,” Natalie Mering quips during the early stages of tonight’s compelling 80-minute performance.

The singer and songwriter operating as Weyes Blood (nodding towards Flannery O’Connor’s classic southern gothic novel) would certainly not get into trouble for false advertising. Drawn mainly from the orchestral swell of 2019’s Titanic Rising and its equally inspired slow-burn of 2022 follow-up And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow, the set rarely ventures beyond mid-tempo as the songs examine the elusive nature of human connection, or lack of it.

However, tonight’s performance is often much more playful and entertaining than you would anticipate from a songwriter who draws deep from the same well of troubled introspection that fuelled the first classic batch of songwriters who congregated around Laurel Canyon in late 60s Los Angeles; Mering has been described as a millennial Joni Mitchell (a near-mandatory point of comparison for any female songwriter exhibiting musical sophistication), although the wounded grandeur of Judee Sill’s songs might be a more apt reference point.

Dressed in a sparkly white dress complete with a glittery cape that channels the flashy outfits Elvis favoured during his Vegas pomp, Mering spends much of the time she’s not busy singing or playing acoustic guitar by pirouetting around the stage while the four-piece band (with a heavy emphasis on keyboards) anchor the proceedings.

Whether reminiscing about getting a CD by Leeds-based anarcho-punks Chumbawamba as a present or subtly making fun of the stately nature of most of her songs (the evening’s sole overly up-tempo offering Everyday, with its subtle echoes of Carole King’s Tapestry, is presented as opportunity for the audience to go crazy; a track with an electronic pulse is declared to open the evening’s rave portion), Mering is effortlessly engaging company.

It says a something about the quality of Mering’s material that swirling, elegantly majestic songs such as the opener A Lot's Gonna Change or the subtly Jimmy Webb-ian countrypolitan glide of Grapevine sound just as potent when shorn of their exquisite orchestral touches.

Towards the end of the set, Mering confesses that she woke up this morning without being able to talk, nearly leading to a cancellation of the show until a cure of Sunday roast and garlic averted disaster. It’s impossible to tell: Mering’s voice sounds just as luxuriously expressive as it does on the records.

The set’s highpoints arrive with the disembodied, haunting cosmic yearning of God Turn Me Into a Flower (accompanied by striking visuals compiled by master documentarian Adam Curtis) and deconstructed torch song Movies, which is accompanied by a rapid-fire procession of brief snippets of cinema classics, and followed by a fan passing some films on DVD for Mering: Spongebob Squarepants and Big Fish, to be precise.

It’s hard to fathom quite how Mering has made the journey from her roots in improvisational US noise-rock to the sumptuous, melodically rich balladry she now excels in. But screechy avant-garde’s loss is definitely our gain tonight.