“Passion is the only thing,” Natalie Mering sings on “Do You Need My Love,” the second taste from her upcoming Weyes Blood album Front Row Seat to Earth. “Passion must mean everything,” she quickly continues, as if still hoping to convince herself. The song is exhilaratingly ambiguous, perched forever in the purgatory between asking the title question and hearing it answered.
Mering’s ever-commanding voice is draped here in stately psych-pop harmonies, AM-gilded keys, and baroque flourishes, all neatly placed just so. “Do You Need My Love” climaxes with the stormy drone of a bridge that’s half effects-zonked space-rock, half Vashti Bunyan-pristine English folk. The press materials and, less directly, the album title hint the song should be heard in a context of drowning—not only in the maelstrom of a doomed romance, but also the tragic realities of a planet beset by climate change. Either way, as with previous Front Row stunner “Seven Words,” this one has enough passion, in its patiently understated way, to mean the world.
