Wolf Weston is the dynamo singer of the restless New York pop quartet Saint Mela. Across the 13 tracks of her band’s debut album, first bloom, her voice sears and smolders and yearns. The quartet tinkers with genre, moving among traces of rap, pop, and wailing rock, often within the same tune. But Weston’s voice is striking no matter what the rest of Saint Mela does, imbuing every note with a pulse-quickening urgency, like a direct shot of adrenaline.
According to Weston, the album unfolds in three sequential parts, all related to the floral nature of the title—soil, stalk, and sun, a loose movement from pain to anger to dewey, light-dappled hope. The first four songs are the “soil.” During “root(less),” a clamoring, vibrant jumble of fuzzy bass, synth, and keys sets the tone; though Weston is heartbroken and hurt here, her spirit, expressed through her magnetic voice, seems indefatigable. Weston laments the people who take advantage of her time and effort, reiterating that she’s careful with her energy while demonstrating just how potent that energy can be. Likewise, “the bends” is deceptively sunny, with skipping synths and chattering drums setting a chipper framework for a searing class critique embedded inside a love song of longing.
Her pain begins to transform into powerful, righteous anger for the “stalk” section. On “blk,” the pounding drums and distorted guitar elevate Weston’s words into a battle cry. She likens herself to smoke, “thick and stinging, leaving you blind.” Emotions peak with “jericho,” a lilting rock song complete with gnashing guitar and siren-like backing vocals. Even this dense tapestry can’t rival Weston’s intensity, buzzing with the brilliance of a dry pine tree set ablaze as she commands, “Let me in/Let go/Tear it down.”
With her gravelly falsetto pasted over watery synths at the start of the final section, Weston is tender. Recalling the glorious haze of Moses Sumney, she hasn’t yet reached catharsis—her love remains unrequited, and she questions who she is and where she’s going. Still, she sounds hopeful. The prepared piano that introduces album standout “buckley” clears space for Wolf’s voice, which oscillates from raspy highs to a honeyed tenor. As her need intensifies, stuttering drums fill out the atmosphere. At the climax, a distant sound that suggests scraping gears (familiar from Lorde’s “Hard Feelings/Loveless”) fosters a soaring sense of ecstasy before it all vanishes, leaving only Weston’s whispered croon.
Despite Weston’s tremendous voice, the lyrics here are oblique, shaping Mod Podged mood boards rather than clear narratives. Feelings and stories bleed from one song to the next, creating a vagueness that sometimes doesn’t resonate. The songs broadly address emotional scars and wrongdoings, sometimes skipping their real-world grounding. This distracts from the emotion evident in Weston’s voice, tantalizing no matter what she sings. Still, what would a first bloom be without room to grow?
