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Dec 02, 2016 By Mark Redfern Weyes Blood

To end out the week, we ask Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) some questions about endings and death. Weyes Blood’s latest album, Front Row Seat to Earth, is out now via Mexican Summer. The album has a faded and timeless quality to it. It possesses an immediate beauty and is driven by Mering’s vocals that somehow sound both fragile and strong, with subtle but soaring orchestral arrangements that lift the listener out of whatever mundane surroundings they find themselves in. Such contradictions make Front Row Seat to Earth one of the year’s most memorable albums, surely also one of the year’s best. Read on Mering talks about her favorite endings to movies, books, and albums, as well as her personal versions of heaven and hell and what she’d like her last words to be.

How would you like to die and what age would you like to be?

I wouldn’t say because I’m the kind of person that believes life and death are in the power of your tongue.

What song would you like to be playing at your deathbed?

Depends if I died young or old—most likely a song that’s happy and sad, like F.R. David’s “Music.” Also very characteristic of my existence, being obsessed with music.

What song would you like to be performed at your funeral and who would you like to sing it?

I’d have Sean Nicholas Savage sing Scorpions’ “Wind of Change,” best thing I have ever seen live.

What’s your favorite ending to a movie?

I love the end of the movie Friday the 13th—who couldn’t? The whole film is pretty basic until you get to that point, on the lake, zooming in on that tiny boat, synths blasting with all kinds of ‘70s phase and oscillation, then POP comes the rotting, naked lake boy. Still gets me every time.

What’s your favorite last line in a book?

The last line of Against the Grain:

“Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of ancient hope”

What’s your favorite series finale last ever episode of a TV show?

Season finale’s, not my forte. There is that one episode of Columbo though that’s incredibly abstract with all these built in film jokes—brilliant and signified the end of there being no self aware directing style in that show. I think it’s called “The Conspirators.”

What’s your favorite last song on an album?

“Time of the Season” by The Zombies on Odessey and Oracle. Best song to have ever been put last.

What’s your favorite last album by a band who then broke up?

Jeff Buckley’s Grace—first and last, baby. Insanely good.

What’s your favorite way a band broke up?

Obviously the girlfriend-when she gets in there and stirs shit up, and everyone blames her for being a catalyst to the realization the band was already dead.

Whose passing has most affected you?

That’s tricky. Probably my dear friend, Sean Finan. He was a musician who I was very influenced by as a teenager—I would book shows for his band and go take the train into the city to see them play too. I took some press photos of them, and some secret photos of him passed out at a party because I thought he was quite the looker. He died of a heroin overdose last year—it was always my desire to reconnect with him, but we all get too busy. His music stands up to this day, a lost talent.

If you were on death row, what would you like your last meal to be?

Sashimi for miles and some kudzu broth! Maybe throw a steak in there, glass of raw milk. If it really happened though I’d probably just want to eat my mother’s cooking, maybe her meatloaf. It’s very depressing to even imagine eating.

What’s your concept of the afterlife?

Your choice—if you hold onto your earthly material life, you will spend an eternity in hell under the spell of loss. If you let go of your material life, you will transcend into the sublime, wanting nothing.

What would be your own personal version of heaven if it exists?

Heaven would be in the mountains with huge crystal-clear pools of water and waterfalls. I’d be jumping in them, swimming underwater and breathing like a fish person. These are actually my happiest dreams that I get the pleasure of having every once in a while.

What would be the worst punishment the devil could devise for you in hell, if he exists?

Probably like my nightmares—playing huge shows with no equipment and ending up doing a deconstructionist noise set while whining into an unplugged microphone.

If reincarnation exists, who or what would you like to be reincarnated as?

I would love to be reincarnated as a billionaire. I’d spend all my money on terraforming our planet, and others.

What role or achievement would you most like to be remembered for?

An emotive creature.

What would you like your last words to be?

Thanks so much for coming out tonight…

www.weyesblood.bandcamp.com