Weyes Blood and the Dark Juices create a strange atmosphere on these six tracks. Natalie Mering (formerly of the fantastic Jackie-O-Motherfucker) provides the voice, the dark juices do just that: they ooze. Each track on here oozes with age, eeriness and a certain degree of Nico-worship.
The Outside Room starts out strong. “Storms that Bleed” reminds you of some long-forgotten religious ritual. Even the echoed percussion in the background adds to the long-forgotten theme they explore on the rest of the tracks. “Dream Song” may be the best song on here. At first it begins as hallucinogenic Western. Eventually the song ends up dreaming about itself, creating a kind of warped sense of reality.
While those are the highlights for me at least, the entire album isn’t terrible. My main problem would do with the often indulgent nature of the proceedings. Jackie-O-Motherfucker avoided a lot of these problems, managing to constantly evolve into something new. Here that does happen, but more often than not it is stasis rather than movement. Had they perhaps cut out some of the more meandering endings of the tracks or kept the quality up from the first two tracks, it would fare much better for me.
Despite that quibble, it is a highly unusual release. It makes me nostalgic for Nico, for the freak-folk groups that used to be far more prevalent. This is definitely a weird one. Listen to it for there are some interesting things being done on here. Future releases I expect they’ll improve upon this alien format.