Natalie Bergman - Keep Those Teardrops from Falling (2021) [Official Digital Download]

Natalie Bergman’s Mercy speaks to a particular stage of the grieving process wherein one’s existence has become so suffused with suffering that the only option for relief is turning to a higher power in a desperate plea to remove it. Bergman, also known as part of brother-sister duo Wild Belle, uses the musical framework of spiritual gospel as filtered through sun-dappled psychedelia (also a somewhat spiritual genre, for all its aesthetic goofiness) to work through the pain of losing her father and stepmother in a drunk driving accident; she learned about their deaths just as she was about to take the stage with Wild Belle—an unspeakably sad story she fearlessly recounts in the record’s tender closing track “Last Farewell.” Though the record is filled with hopeful entreaties to the power of Jesus to lift up lost souls, wrapped up twinkly 60s-tinged sounds, Mercy (which Bergman wrote, performed and mixed herself) is often at its most potent when she strips the music down to its barest essentials and her lyrics down to questions that are heartbreaking in their simplicity. On “Home at Last,” she idly strums her guitar and wonders: “What is my sin, Lord? / Where is my joy?” Though some may be put off by the record’s barefaced religiosity, for Bergman, there is no distinction between the healing ability of God and that of music. On Mercy, she puts her faith in both.

TRACKLIST

1. Keep Those Teardrops from Falling (2:45)
2. You've Got a Friend in Jesus (2:26)
3. I'm Not Your Puppet (3:28)
4. Glory Hallelujah, I'm Gonna Fly (3:28)



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