Chelsea Wolfe is about a step away from becoming the biggest singer/songwriter of our generation. Her music embodies some warp between Leonard Cohen and Fiona Apple. In her new single for “After The Fall,” we see both the delicate and world burning sides of Wolfe. The music itself feels otherworldly in its production, going to lengths to make everything nearly blissful. When the chorus kicks in, everything goes crashing into the earth at a million miles an hour, the distortion of the synth becoming more and more massive with each second. The electronic crunch is the kind of noise you’d probably hear at the last concert before the apocalypse. Her voice effortlessly goes back and forth between these two modes, reminding us why she’s the best.
Chelsea Wolfe has a cover feature in the newest print issue of New Noise Magazine - available to order HERE.
Don’t miss the chance to see her on her North American tour - tickets are available HERE, and a full list of dates can be found below.
Chelsea Wolfe 2015 Tour Dates: 08/27 – Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar * 08/28 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge * 08/29 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater # 08/31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club # 09/01 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall # 09/02 – Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop # 09/03 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace 09/04 – Montreal, QC @ Theater Fairmont 09/05 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair # 09/09 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg # 09/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts # 09/11 – Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall # 09/12 – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival # 09/14 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 # 09/15 – Nashville, tN @ Mercy Lounge # 09/17 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks # 09/18 - Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s British Pub # 09/19 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk # 09/20 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler # 09/22 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls # 09/23 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad # 09/24 – Phoenix, AX @ Valley Bar # 09/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater # 09/26 – San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center # 09/28 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater # 09/29 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos # 09/30 – Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw )) 10/01 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown ))
The lo-fi fuzz and red raw minimalism of Chelsea Wolfe’s 2010 debut outing The Grime and the Glow feel like a distant memory when listened to alongside Abyss. Her fifth and most tonally diverse offering to date, it serves as a fitting reminder of the sonic distance she’s covered over her deceptively short career, which, lest we forget, spans a mere five years. That’s five albums in five years; a prolific output in anyone’s book.
Perhaps this quick-fire approach can explain how she’s been able to arrive at her current destination in such an impressive time frame. These days, most artists struggle to put out a record once every two or three years; years spent ruminating on and refining material to the point that audible progress gets lost in the search for polished perfection. Yet, where others endeavour to cloak or eradicate the perceived blemishes and imperfections of their art with extensive recording and production sessions, Wolfe, it seems, is more concerned with capturing the emotion and intensity of the moment.
That said, the signature moves that make Wolfe and her work so unique are evident as ever throughout Abyss, blending all of the touchstones from each of her previous efforts and coaxing them into previously uncharted territories.
The result is a record that showcases Wolfe at her gothic, folk-infused best. Seamlessly woven between dense layers of crashing guitar and industrial electronica lie brittle vocals and disarmingly infectious melodies, shedding just enough light to offset the weight of the darkness.
How, then, did she and the band arrive at this new, all-encompassing sound?
“We are a band that is constantly striving to grow and try new things, but the way our sound has developed has been really natural and instinctual,” Wolfe explains. “I’m really lucky to play with such great musicians and working with my co-producer, Ben Chisholm, has taken this project in such a cool direction - we’ve been able to combine our inspirations to create something new.”
A different approach to recording also helped shape the sound of Abyss, with both a change of scenery and a closer working relationship with the album’s producer contributing to its more eclectic sound.
“I was more open to working with a producer on this album - wanted some fresh blood in the mix. We’ve always recorded in California, but this time we went out to Dallas for a month to record at John Congleton’s studio with him. Working with a producer automatically introduces a new element and even some tension to the recording. We always demo out all of our songs before we head into the studio, so sometimes it’s hard not to get attached to all the elements and layers there. In the studio it becomes a balancing out of things - the parts we initially came up with and new parts that are written in the studio.”
When it came recording the new material, Wolfe capitalised on an abundance of vintage equipment found in Congleton’s studio to achieve the tonal qualities she had been seeking.
“John’s studio is full of rad, old gear. We used little amps - a Matchless and an old Fender Princeton. We used a MiniMoog Model D for a lot of the bass synth, which made it super heavy.
“Most of the guitar was done on my Gibson ES 335, which I got last year, and Mike Sullivan played his parts on his beautiful Gibson Lucille. We also used a Fender Jazzmaster. We used a Therevox ET 4.2 on ‘Dragged Out’. It sounds terrifying to me, like hearing an air-raid siren but not so literal.”
So, how has her personal set-up changed over the years? Is she content with the arsenal currently at her disposal, or does she see herself as a collector of gear?
“I used to focus more on vocal effects pedals - running my M80 mic through guitar pedals and Boss loop station and my second mic (Beta 58) through a TC Helicon vocal pedal, but in recent times I’ve also gotten more and more into guitar pedals. I used to rely on the natural distortion of my amp (Fender Hot Rod Deluxe), but yeah, now I’m collecting tone and distortion pedals and it’s so much fun. I’m also playing through a Death by Audio Apocalypse, EarthQuaker Talons, POG and more. I’m also into Dwarfcraft pedals.“
And what of the effects deployed on Abyss? In recent years, artists have been increasingly relying upon iPhone and iPad FX apps during the recording process. Is this an approach Wolfe has embraced?
“Almost none of the effects on the album were produced in a computer or app, the exception being some digital reverbs here and there, but rarely. We used a range of guitar pedals and ran almost everything through them. A lot of EarthQuaker pedals, like Disaster Transport and Afterneath. We used MemoryMan 2s and Eventide pedals.
“Ben uses Ableton to create the vocal cut-up work, but even a lot of that was re-amped. I wanted the album to be raw and natural, and John pushed it even further in that direction.”
Wolfe’s traditional approach to recording is mirrored somewhat in her musical buying habits; opting, where possible, to purchase instruments from bricks and mortar stores, as opposed to online retailers.
“If I find a used instruments store or mom and pop-style music store I’m much more apt to go to that, but I also tend to hit the Guitar Center often for stuff too. I bought my newest guitar (the Gibson) from Ebay because I was looking for a really specific one - I had played one in a guitar shop at some point and fell in love, but I needed to save up for it. But I do prefer to just connect with an instrument in person, like I did with my Fender Jaguar. I’ve always loved Jaguars and Jazzmasters and when I saw that one sitting there, all natural matte wood with no pick guard, I knew it was true love, and I played that on the road for two or three years.
This emotional and physical response to music stems back to Wolfe’s formative years as a young child, citing access to musical instruments and music stores from a young age as crucial aspects in her development as a musician.
“I found my mom’s old classical guitar that she played in high school in the garage at some point and it became my favorite guitar to write on. One of the tuning pegs had broken off so I just tuned to that string. It was quite a bit lower because of that so from then on I tuned all of my guitars down to it, to D standard. It suits me better. My dad also passed down an acoustic Guild to me that I cherish and still write a lot on, and a lot of other gear. There were some used instrument stores in my hometown of Sacramento that I used to love to wander through, but they’ve sadly all closed.”
Wolfe is also of the opinion that a lack of independent music stores could have a significant impact upon the way future generations engage with music
“It might affect the way people connect to instruments or learn about them, maybe. You don’t meet very many sales people in large chain stores who really LOVE guitars and love talking about them, their history. I think that’s the thing we’ll lose out on. It’s a shame but it’s true of many types of businesses these days - bookstores, record shops etc.”
Released August 7th, Abyss could be seen as a fitting bookend to Wolfe’s output to date. It certainly feels like a definitive piece of work, encapsulating each of the key strokes that make up her signature. Either way, we probably won’t be made to wait too long to see where record number six takes her.
Onstage, Chelsea Wolfe stands tall, a grim reaper draped in dark fabrics. The music all but swallows atmosphere—Wolfe and her band can transform any room into a cavernous hollow with her celestial voice and manipulated, diverse guitars. One minute the drums are pounding while synths fuzz around the beat; the next, it’s just Wolfe’s soft whisper, amplified and bouncing off the ceiling. It takes most performers years to manifest the right look, but Wolfe accidentally perfected hers immediately. She was so shy when she started that she insisted on singing through a black veil.
“When I finally got the guts to let go of the veil and just make eye contact with the audience, it was very empowering,” Wolfe tells me over drinks in her current home of Los Angeles. “But my love of fashion and silhouettes did not go away. Dressing up helps me separate and prepare for the stage. I want to feel good about myself so I can just let go and be in the music.”
Following her debut release in 2010 (The Grime and the Glow, from Pendu Sound), Wolfe and her longtime coproducer Ben Chisolm gained critical media acclaim. And after years of touring with everyone from Deafheaven to Queens of the Stone Age and three more standout releases—including the most well-received LP thus far, Pain Is Beauty—Wolfe’s alternative sound has seen much of the mainstream. Her music has even been featured on HBO’s Game of Thrones. And at 31, the Northern California native is releasing her fifth and fullest studio album yet, Abyss (Sargent House). Produced by John Congleton (who has worked with musicians like St. Vincent and R. Kelly), Abyss is a dynamic orchestration of darkness that documents Wolfe’s foggy personal struggle with dreams, anxiety, and a troubling form of sleep paralysis.
“When it first started happening—heavily in my adulthood—I would scream and thrash because I thought the things in my dreams were in my room, actually coming toward me,” Wolfe explains. “It was only in the aftermath of [Abyss] that I realized how much this influenced the record.”
The new album is signature Chelsea Wolfe cathedral rock, but heavier, toying with tensions between industrial walls, and then diminishing into softer sounds. It’s the kind of album you want to play loud and alone. Wolfe grew up listening to her father’s country band. As a child, she says, she aspired to be a poet, and lyrics are still about as important to her as sound is. “I approach music in an instinctual way because I am not as technically trained as most,” she adds. “A song just has to feel right, emotionally and atmospherically. That’s my idea of perfection: when you can put headphones on and it feels like the song is swirling around you.”
Chelsea Wolfe has announced a North American tour together in support of Chelsea’s upcoming album, Abyss. Joining her for most of the US dates will be Wovenhand, who will be touring in support of his latest album, Refractory Obdurate. A full of list of shows can be found below. Tickets for all dates go on sale Friday, June 5th.
Chelsea Wolfe 2015 Tour Dates: 08/27 – Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar 08/28 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge 08/29 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater # 08/31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club # 09/01 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall # 09/02 – Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop # 09/03 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace 09/04 – Montreal, QC @ Theater Fairmont 09/05 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair # 09/09 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg # 09/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts # 09/11 – Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall # 09/12 – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival # 09/14 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 # 09/15 – Nashville, tN @ Mercy Lounge # 09/17 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks # 09/19 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk # 09/20 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler # 09/22 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls # 09/23 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad # 09/24 – Phoenix, AX @ Valley Bar # 09/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater # 09/26 – San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center # 09/28 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater # 09/29 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos # 09/30 – Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw 10/01 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown
Chelsea Wolfe played the new song “Dragged Out” during a show in Amsterdam, and Converse Rubber Tracks Live did a great job capturing it. This song is off her upcoming album Abyss, to be released August 7th.
There are already lots of low ticket warnings for her North American fall tour, so buy tickets now (available HERE). A full list of shows can be found below.
Chelsea Wolfe North American Tour Aug 27 - Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar + Aug 28 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge + Aug 29 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater # Aug 31 - Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club # Sep 1 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall # Sep 2 - Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop # Sep 3 - Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace Sep 4 - Montreal, QC @ Theater Fairmont Sep 5 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair # Sep 9 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg # Sep 10 - Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts # Sep 11 - Washington DC @ U Street Music Hall # Sep 12 - Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival # Sep 14 - Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 # Sep 15 - Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge # Sep 17 - New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks # Sep 18 - Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s British Pub # Sep 19 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk # Sep 20 - Dallas, TX @ The Kessler # Sep 22 - El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls # Sep 23 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad # Sep 24 - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar # Sep 25 - Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater # Sep 26 - San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center # Sep 28 - Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater # Sep 29 - Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s * Sep 30 - Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw * Oct 2 - Bellingham, WA @ Shakedown
+ with Upsilon Acrux # with Wovenhand * with Mamiffer
In teasing her forthcoming LP Abyss (out Aug. 7) these last three months, singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe is slowly mantling one of the fall’s most intriguing releases – and one that’s an apt follow-up to her 2013 breakout, Pain Is Beauty.
She continues to entrance with the release of “Grey Days,” premiering exclusively on Billboard.com.
As with her fourth full-length’s previous releases – “Iron Moon,” “Carrion Flowers” and “After the Fall” – “Grey Days” utilizes its droning, gothic production to dissect the nocturnal mind’s innermost cavities. Constructed around a looping drum kick and haunting viola by longtime Wolfe collaborators Dylan Fujioka and Ezra Buchla, the track doesn’t bear the same pronounced aggression as the California-based musician’s other fare. More a sorrowful lullaby built on industrialized distortions and wispy, howling vocals, it’s just as captivating.
“For this album I was interested in the subconscious, or unconscious mind, approaching it like a warehouse full of memories and emotions to be confronted,” Wolfe tells Billboard. “The title [‘Grey Days’] came from a conversation with someone I met on the road who had been in prison. He called that time his 'grey days.’ It’s about something holding you back.”
The song’s verses describe a prisoner of oneself, a cell held shut by an internal weight – or as Wolfe says, a darkness. “In the song, [what’s holding you back is] represented very internally,” she says. “[It was] inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki film, Princess Mononoke, where darkness is represented by an iron ball as a sort of demon that ruins you from the inside out.”
“How many years have I been sleeping?/ How many hours did I throw away?” Wolfe sings. “Why does everything feel so unnamed?/ The poison inside helps me along.”
Rather than answer these lamentations, “Grey Days” succumbs to the addict’s dilemma, choosing to feel nothing as a means of getting by. “Like the morphine, you take it all away/ Pretend it’s ok.”
“I’m drawn to the peace in feeling nothing, but I’m also afraid of feeling nothing,” Wolfe says of this dark dichotomy. It’s one seen throughout her body of work. “The song is a battle.”
Chelsea Wolfe chats about Abyss, her new album of sultry vocals, sludge metal and drone. She also discusses her Dad’s country band, overcoming her fear of performing and how this latest album embraces distorted electronics and fuzz guitar to create huge dynamic shifts and gargantuan doom.
Singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe and I are sitting out on the back patio of Black Boar bar in Los Angeles drinking vodka and talking about pitch shifter pedals. However, we are being interrupted by an ex-touring musician-turned-bottomless-cage-dancer-turned-shrimp-boat-fisherman.
Wolfe and I politely listen while bottomless-shrimp-interrupter-guy explains to both of us exactly how a pitch shifter works, even though we both know: a pitch shifter shifts pitch. It allows the musician to program and play multiple harmonies at the same time. It’s a really atmospheric toy, one that Wolfe has been using lately. We engage bottomless-shrimp-interrupter for a bit, then direct our conversation back to her fifth studio album Abyss (Sargent House), a masterpiece of angelic, darkly compelling songs that grow far past Wolfe’s prior material.
“You should put that in the story,” Wolfe laughs as the guy walks back inside the bar. It’s too typical: male musician hears two female musicians talking about making music and feels he has to insert himself into the conversation. It’s annoying, but it’s harmlessly funny. It’s just part of being a woman in music: some man always thinks he knows better.
Not many people know how to make a Chelsea Wolfe record better she does, but for Abyss she enlisted world-renowned producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent) in full trust that he did know better. Wolfe and her band met Congleton on tour, months prior to the album, and she knew she liked him right away, but she could tell their personalities would “butt heads a bit.” However, his past work spoke volumes and conflict in the studio is almost never a bad thing. It will ebb and flow, and make a better record.
“He is a great producer so I kind of had to let go a little bit,” she explains. “My approach to the album was very warm and hazy, and [Congleton’s] was more cold. It’s probably one of the reasons [Abyss] sounds so different from the others. Sonically, he does such a good job of making sure everything has a place. I’ll mix songs into mush.”
Abyss (which drops August 7th) plays on the mantra of designer Yohji Yamamoto: “Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.” The album weaves in and out like a trance: a crafted swirl of guitars, drums, viola and synths. Songs like “Iron Moon” pull you in from the first hit, while “Crazy Love” and “After the Fall” ring out like demonic, unpredictable lullabies. Abyss is a showcase of tension and texture with Wolfe’s voice leading the way. Wolfe and her long time co-producer Ben Chisholm used it as a mirror to express the terror of the sleep paralysis she has been plagued with most of her adult life.
“I wake up, I open my eyes and figures that were in my dream are still there,” she tells me softly. (Everything about Wolfe is quiet yet unassumingly strong.) “When it first started happening I would scream, thrash because I thought there was a real person there in my room, moving towards me.” She never opened up about it to anyone, but soon told her father (a country musician himself with a home studio) and realized this wasn’t normal. “I just assumed it happened to everyone.”
Wolfe began her career almost a decade ago in her hometown of Sacramento, California. A shy kid who always felt as though she was “100 years old” at heart, Wolfe started writing songs at age nine on a simple 8-track, drawn to the pianos and guitars that were always around.
“From then on I was always writing and recording but oddly never imagined that it was something I could do for my career; for my life. I even avoided it for some reason, suppressing the part of myself that desired music and tried to go in a million different other directions,” she says. Then, in her early 20s, she met folk artist Steve Vanoni who ran an art compound called HorseCow, where Vanoni invited Wolfe to come on tour with him and helped guide her into her own musician. She returned home inspired and recorded her debut album The Grime and the Glow on her father’s 8-track. She soon started playing live, but stood out like a sore thumb in the hyper-technical math rock scene of the early 2000s.
“Everyone was doing all these things that seemed so crazy and I was just strumming and singing these emotionally raw songs. I felt like I was unequipped to be doing music,” she admits. But this alienation from a technical genre set her apart. She played with a veil for the first few years, unable to show her face due to her extreme stage fright. In 2010 she released her debut album, followed by Apokalypsis (2011) which was praised by international music media, gaining her an underground following. She signed with Sargent House alongside bands like Deafheaven, Wovenhand, Earth, and the next two albums saw her touring with Queen of the Stone Age, collaborating with designers and filmmakers (she and Mark Pellington recently released a long-form film, Lone), pushing her to a more mainstream stardom. Her single “Feral Love” was featured in Game of Thrones.
All the while, the fashion world was taking note of Wolfe’s unique style, draped fabrics, structured capes and custom-made horse-hair arm bracelets so long they drag on the ground. “Dressing up [for stage] is like armor, or a ritual for me to prepare to play the show,” Wolfe says. She and her stylist Jenni Hensler have been working together for years. “[Hesler] taught me to take risks in [fashion] and introduced me to designers who made the kinds of clothes I felt aligned with.”
Wolfe’s appeal in both her aesthetic and her music has always been mystery. Unlike many other artists today, she is very private about her personal gossip, only expressing deeply through her music instead of in interviews and social media. She is carefully reserved, which she says, was due to a few bad experiences at the beginning of her career.
“I make emotional music that some people connect with on a deep level and I’m sharing a really intimate side by being a singer and songwriter, so I feel strongly that I have to keep that separate from my home life and personal relationships, to keep them protected from each other,” she explains.
“I just want to make honest music, an honest living.”
“Heartbreak and darkness are the threads that run through Wolfe’s diverse-yet-distinctive discography. They’re never far behind her. If anything, Abyss chases them, with a tenderness that understands the beauty to be captured therein.” See full write-up at NPR First Listen
Chelsea Wolfe has also added European dates to her 2015 headlining tour. Support on the majority of the European dates will come from newly-announced labelmates, A Dead Forest Index. EU headlining dates can be found below. You can see a full list of shows, including the North American headlining tour, and purchase tickets HERE.
Chelsea Wolfe European Tour
Oct 30 - Cologne, DE @ Yuca Club Oct 31 - Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique w/ Low Nov 02 - Hamburg, DE @ Knust ** Nov 03 - Gothenburg, SE @ Pustervik ** Nov 04 - Oslo, NO @ Blä ** Nov 05 - Stockholm, SE @ Slakthuset ** Nov 06 - Copenhagen, DK @ Loppen ** Nov 07 - Hannover, DE @ Café Glocksee ** Nov 08 - Leipzig, DE @ UT Connewitz ** Nov 10 - Warsaw, PL @ Proxima ** Nov 11 - Poznan, PL @ Blue Note ** Nov 12 - Berlin, DE @ Lido ** Nov 13 - Prague, CZ @ Dobeska ** Nov 14 - Budapest, HU @ A38 w/ A Place To Bury Strangers ** Nov 15 - Vienna, AT @ Arena ** Nov 17 - Yverdon-Les-Bains, CH @ L’Amalgame ** Nov 18 - Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie ** Nov 19 - Metz, FR @ Les Trinitaires ** Nov 21 - Kortrijk, BE @ Sonic City Festival Nov 22 - London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall ** Nov 24 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club Nov 25 - Dublin, IRE @ Button Factory Nov 27 - Prestatyn, UK @ ATP: Nightmare Before Christmas Nov 29 - Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
Chelsea Wolfe has trouble sleeping. Her issue, specifically, is sleep paralysis, a medical condition in which one wakes up and is unable to move, feels pinned down by a large weight, or has vivid impressions of another presence in the room. Doctors insist the experience isn’t necessarily indicative of any dangerous condition; it’s a result of the transitional state between REM sleep and other sleep stages becoming interrupted, causing the mind to be awake before the body. Thus the feeling of paralysis and, often, hallucinations.
For Wolfe, these hallucinations manifest as a shadowy figure in her room moving toward her. “During really intense times that it’s happened in the past, I’ve lashed out at nothing or grabbed my knife thinking someone was really there,” she says.
Wolfe’s sleep paralysis doesn’t involve the sensation of being unable to move, but rather the feeling of an immense pressure weighing down on her chest alongside the hallucinations. The sensation, she explains, was something she didn’t even know was unusual until she started talking about it with others. “I was at dinner with my dad, and he was talking about thinking there was someone in his room once during a dream, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that happens to me almost every day,’” says Wolfe. “Everyone stopped talking and just looked at me, very concerned.”
Those feelings of pressure, dread, and suffocation are what Wolfe drew upon as inspiration for her latest album, Abyss, which stands out as the neo-folk artist’s heaviest work to date. Wolfe’s discography has always been filled with songs that recall half-forgotten dreams, and Abyss furthers that notion of exploring the space between dreams and reality, often in a way that feels immense and overwhelming, at times approaching doom metal. “We weren’t going for a metal sound or really any genre in particular, but we wanted it to be heavy,” says Wolfe.
While that heaviness includes high levels of distortion throughout the record, Wolfe explains that for her, the word heavy means many different things, ranging from guitar tones to finding human sounds out of programmed beats to adding layers of viola from collaborator Ezra Buchla — all of which contributed to a sense of frenzy on many of Abyss’ songs. “The way Ezra plays is kind of the way I imagine my soul would sound,” Wolfe says.
Wolfe chose to leave Los Angeles and record the album in Dallas with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Swans, Antony and the Johnsons). Wolfe “jumped at the chance” to record outside Los Angeles; she lives an hour outside the city now and used the change in setting as an inspiration to write new songs. The framework for Abyss’ title track was written on a rundown piano in the chapel of an old limestone building on the property of Josh T. Pearson in the “middle of nowhere, Texas,” a place Wolfe describes as “magical.”
For Abyss, Wolfe wanted to write songs that would lend themselves to a live setting. “We’ve played with such great live bands over the past couple of years, and they looked like they were having fun up there,” she says. “I wanted that, too, so I made sure the album had some songs that would be fun to play live.”
The focus on the live renditions doesn’t take way from any of the darkness or grandeur that pervades the album. For inspiration, Wolfe drew from the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung, specifically Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a partial autobiography Jung wrote shortly before his death. The book focused on recollections of his life, as well as the vivid dreams he would have about friends he hadn’t seen in years, only to find out that they had either just died or would die a few days later.
One dream in particular that Wolfe had about a strange experience in a cave served as a catalyst for the album. For Wolfe, it represented a deep, metaphorical drop into the subconscious. Her focus was on “confronting things that live in the dark places in the mind; confronting things that live in the darkest places on Earth, and beyond that, acknowledging the universe as a wild and endless abyss that we’re all just haphazardly a part of and trying to figure out.”
Photo by Johanna Torell
While the album is heavily influenced by her sleep problems and research into dreams, it’s not autobiographical. None of her albums are. A few years before her 2010 debut, The Grime and the Glow, Wolfe wrote a record about the breakup of three different relationships (“two guys, one girl”) that she scrapped because “it was sickeningly personal.” Since then, Wolfe explains her conscious effort to write songs about the ideas she would write poetry about, “the fucked up things in the world that nobody wants to talk about, the beautiful things that happen at the same time as those fucked up things, and the contrast between them.”
One example on Abyss is “Iron Moon”, a song about the true story of a 24-year-old Chinese poet and Foxconn worker named Xu Lizhi who committed suicide last year. From 2011 to 2014, Lizhi wrote poetry about the harsh conditions of working in a factory in Shenzen. After failed attempts to make a living by returning to his hometown and finding a career in the arts, he ended his life. For Wolfe, one poem of Lizhi’s, “I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron”, stood out. It’s a striking piece that contains lines like:
Youth stooped at machines die before their time I swallowed the hustle and the destitution Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust I can’t swallow any more
This kind of imagery, which Wolfe describes as “heavy, heartbreaking, and gorgeous,” served as a template for her approach to Abyss. While she drew on her own experiences for the album, even its most personal song, the wistful and desolate “Maw”, was influenced by a 1998 Robin Williams film Wolfe watched after his death last year. In the film, What Dreams May Come, Williams’ character undergoes a trial to find his wife in the afterlife, only to find that she doesn’t recognize him because she’s trapped in a sort of “mind-hell.” The term “maw” came to Wolfe after that and served as the backbone for the song. “It’s so visceral,” Wolfe says. “I fall in love with words like that — words that instantly bring to mind several different images. Like ‘abyss.’ It’s a perfect word.”
Wolfe’s journey into the abyss may be a personal one, but on her album, she invites the listener to take the plunge with her. Her sleep paralysis doesn’t happen as often now that she’s moved to the mountains and removed stressors from her life. Abyss acts as a catharsis, as well as a resolve to take back control in situations where it has been lost. With regard to her sleep troubles, Wolfe says, “Over time, I just taught myself to take a few seconds to breathe and fully wake up.” In finding that calm in the abyss, Wolfe is finally able to keep the terror at bay.
Chelsea Wolfe’s has US and EU tours in support of this new album - see all dates and buy tickets HERE.
See what people are saying about the album below.
“Wolfe has found a way to remain backed by candelabra and decked in minimalist corpse paint and still locate pop melody alongside the bombast. The sultry ballad “Simple Death” is dark, but it’s also gorgeous and catchy: Wolfe is not simply going heavier for heavier’s sake, she’s mastering her craft, writing songs that you remember immediately, and that you’ll find yourself humming now and then. The bigger sound is what the source material, her sleep/dream issues, needed. Which brings to mind that line about letting your hair grow as you get old, of not changing your course. We’re all frail and imperfect, and that’s fine. But instead of inventing a persona or finding an easier way, Wolfe went deep into herself, doubled down on the horrors of life, and came back with a bleak, beautiful masterpiece—she kept going, especially when it started to hurt.” - Pitchfork
“Chelsea Wolfe’s sound may not be “heavy” in the traditional sense, but there’s something so abrasive about the arrangements on Abyss that detuned guitars aren’t required to deliver crushing music. Songs like “Iron Moon” mingle sludgy instrumentation and cacophonous noise with Wolfe’s cathartic caterwaul, while the electronic-tinged “Grey Days” adopts a tone as haunting as it is seductive. But no matter how aggressive the instrumentation, the music always manages to push things forward, as showcased by the avant-orchestral finale, ‘The Abyss.’” - Revolver
“There’s a vast landscape in Abyss, but most times it’s too dark to be certain of what you see. That wavering imagery, an intentional creative choice, gives the album room to swell with personalized monsters. The tormented piano melody of “The Abyss” pierces the delicate wind blowing in the background, setting up the score for any scarring horror film of the future, complete with nervous fiddling on the violin. Now more than ever, Wolfe’s deathly gloom matches her music succinctly. Abyss terrifies from start to finish, the haunting work of a twisted genius in her prime.” - Consequence of Sound
“Heartbreak and darkness are the threads that run through Wolfe’s diverse-yet-distinctive discography. They’re never far behind her. If anything, Abyss chases them, with a tenderness that understands the beauty to be captured therein.” - NPR Music
“Her best work yet, by far, which is saying something already…In the end, it’s what stays with you of Abyss that really matters, it’s the images you take from this plunge that define the lasting power of this music…something from Abyss will stay with you, something from it will change you. And that is a feat that not many albums can claim.” - Terrorizer, Album of the Month Review
“Some albums introduce themselves, and the sonic world they inhabit, gradually, unfolding like the opening of a play or film, offering sweeping views of what to expect over the next hour. Other records take a more direct approach, dropping listeners right into a world of exciting, tantalising riffs and melodies. And then there are records like Abyss, where listeners aren’t so much dropped into a sonic world as bludgeoned within an inch of their life and left reeling for the next 56 minutes. It’s a stunning, thrilling record and one that becomes more and more rewarding with each subsequent listen.” - The 405
“Density, weight and punishing intensity threaten to entirely submerge Chelsea Wolfe’s fourth album in a cloak of gothic camouflage. But peer behind the veneer and what do you encounter? Rather than the banshee figure one might expect, Abyss portrays a skilled songwriter at the peak of her game, capable of composing wonderfully harmonious, country-tinged laments – albeit drowning them in outlandish studio trickery and effects.” - The Skinny
“The music of Chelsea Wolfe is a lush cacophony of drones, dirges, and dark beauty that has proven to be quite transcending with recent TV spots in hits shows such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. The heady mixture of shoegaze, industrial, and doom metal combined with Chelsea’s fragile but commanding vocals creates a uniform wall of sound all it’s own. Abyss, the singer-songwriter’s fifth album and third overall for Sargent House records, is a funeralesque tour-de-force of raw emotion that impressively melds a pop charm into each aching track.” - Soundblab
“The depth of the arrangements sets Abyss even farther apart from—and ahead of—Wolfe’s past recordings. The beat-laden highlights of Pain Is Beauty provided a more stripped down precursor, but Wolfe gets even more comfortable with noise and volume, juxtaposing her gently melancholy vocals against a claustrophobic atmosphere of grind and pulse.” - Treble Zine
“What makes Abyss so wonderfully gloomy/gloomily wonderful is Chelsea’s mastery of conveying emotional states that our nightmares can conjure. Anxiety, despair, and pining are all laced within the subconscious mind; and Wolfe has brought these feelings to light and made us feel the most vulnerable. That deep emotional affliction that is conveyed in Abyss is what makes the album such an exceptional piece of music. It is not very often an album can make a listener comfortable with susceptibility to their own emotions.” - The Amalgam
“Wolfe’s greatest weapon is her voice, which is ethereal and haunting, yet has the power to stand out against the unearthly sounds that fill the album. Wolfe employs a pallette of strings, synthesizers, deeply distorted guitars, and a menacing bass sound that hits you in the guts. Many of the tracks on the album hew to a similar pattern: a simple, stark verse, where Wolfe’s voice stands almost alone, followed by an explosion of a chorus. It’s a simple formula, but it works perfectly here. And the reason is that Wolfe has a complete mastery of the sound she is trying to achieve. Nothing is out of place. Nothing is accidental. Each sound is calculated to produce a desired effect. That may sound stifling, but it isn’t. This is a living, breathing album that moves with the stark menace of a perfect predator.” - Reverb Press
“The visceral personal details and graphic authenticity of the singer-songwriter are characteristics which Wolfe has been adopting more and more into her art as of late.Abyss marks an emotional lull in her career, acting as the tumultuous aftermath of Pain Is Beauty, channelling the viciousness of her early output, but feeling especially singular. As the odd-one-out in her catalogue, Abyss is Wolfe’s most emotionally direct, with unequivocal mourns for lost lovers summoning the titular abyss and beckoning its maw with each overcast delivery. Until finally, you are swallowed, and subjected to the nightmare Wolfe describes in “Simple Death”, where you are screaming, but you can’t wake up.” - Drunken Werewolf
“…feeling haunted is the ultimate feeling that Abyss delivers, whether it be through samples of people screaming, violin trills or some awesome doom metal riffs. It’s a twisted piece of work that will leave you feeling a sense of desolation and fear much greater than many heavier bands that Chelsea Wolfe takes inspiration from, and though it may concern dreams, once you hear this album, falling asleep is the last thing you’ll be able to do.” - Subba Cultcha
L.A.-based singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe just gifted the world with one heck of an album. Abyss, her fifth full length release, is a beautiful, intricate tangle of dark, dreamy folk-metal. We chat with Wolfe about growing up in her father’s studio, the dark influences behind her songwriting and how she learned to find her voice.
How long have you been writing songs?
Since I was around 9 years old. While I was growing up my father was in a country band and they’d record and practice at his home studio. I was mesmerized by the harmonies and the recording process. My dad taught me some basics and set me up with a Tascam 8-track and I recorded songs on that thing for years. I still have it.
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
Yes. I was listening to a lot of R&B at the time, and got really into Lauryn Hill, and my dad introduced me to bands like Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin, while my mom showed me artists like Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, so I think my first songs were a sort of blend of all those influences. I was writing really straightforward songs about things I knew nothing about, like love and relationships. I had a big imagination for simple subjects.
How did you get started?
I wrote poetry first and then decided to set words to music. Over the years I just kept writing and recording, but never imagined that I could actually be a musician or be up in front of people playing shows. Eventually, though, friends and family encouraged me enough to give it try. It was rough for many years – it took me a long time to feel comfortable and keep my head together onstage. That was in my early 20’s. Around the time of my first album release, The Grime and the Glow, that’s when I started taking things more seriously and focusing on music over anything else.
What’s your typical songwriting process like?
Typically I write alone and then bring demos to my co-producer Ben Chisholm or the rest of the band to work parts out together. Ben also writes songs for this project, and I also sort of curate songs from outside at times. For this album, “Iron Moon” was co-written by our friend Karlos Rene Ayala who wrote the song “Boyfriend,” which I covered on my acoustic album Unknown Rooms. I also do a cover of another friend, Jesse K. Phillips’, song “Arteries,” but gave it new lyrics, melody and title: “Color of Blood.”
Several of your songs were written about world events, like the suicide of a Foxconn worker last year. How often do real events (ones you haven’t experienced yourself) inspire your writing?
They’ve always been an influence on why I write. The first time I wrote a poem when I was a kid was when I realized how things connect – sounds, situations, people. The realities of the world immediately surrounding me juxtaposed with the realities of the world as a whole; this macro vs. micro perspective has always haunted me, even in my dreams.
How much do aesthetics play into your songwriting?
I write in an instinctual way, letting the ideas come as they come. Image and aesthetic don’t have much to do with songwriting for me. It’s what comes after. While I’m writing it is very visual for me, but it’s behind closed eyes. I wrote most of the songs for Abyss in a big empty barn at my manager’s property out in the high desert, and the rest in my little studio at home, surrounded by colorful Steve Vanoni paintings, but I almost always had my eyes closed no matter where I was. It’s the feeling of a space or a moment I’m trying to capture, not the look of it.
Which of your songs – on any album – was the most difficult for you to write?
“They’ll Clap When You’re Gone” was a really personal and emotional song. The end part is a bit separated from me – I was alluding to sparkling people, musicians, actors who die young and sort of live on forever because of it, but the verses had some lines that cut really deep. I almost didn’t put the song on the album because it was so dark and personal, but I also felt like it was important to keep being brutally honest. “The Waves Have Come” was equally as brutal. I was watching footage from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011, including home videos from people who lost their loved ones and homes and I wrote the song based off of that. I sometimes come out of songwriting sessions physically shaking or with my heart beating almost out of my chest.
Which of your songs do your fans react to the most?
I often hear requests at shows for “Halfsleeper,” one of my older songs.
Who are your favorite songwriters?
Abner Jay, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams.
What bands or artists are you listening to at the moment that we should check out?
Lately I’ve been listening to Screature, John Fahey, Aphex Twin, Wardruna, Scientist, Fetty Wap, Röyksopp & Robyn, Sumac, Russian Circles, True Widow, Flying Lotus, Brody Dalle, Wovenhand, and the Scott Walker + Sunn O))) record Soused.
With a tonal darkness that borders on infernal, Chelsea Wolfe has been building and experimenting with nearly every genre of music since the age of nine. The California-born singer-songwriter’s music is now creeping into the mainstream with her 2013 release Pain Is Beauty, while holding tight to her underground following. Her track “Feral Love” was featured in HBO’s Game of Thrones, and she collaborated with director Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies,Arlington Road) for her longform music video-film Lone. Her newest album,Abyss, was recorded in Dallas with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent) and takes a quote by designer Yohji Yamamoto as its talisman: “Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”
As a former editor of Hustler magazine and author of Punk Elegies, a memoir about the birth of the ’70s LA punk movement, Allan MacDonell has a comprehensive outlook on the punk rock music scene. Here, MacDonell discusses Wolfe’s career, the theatrical elements of her music and her creative process.
Allan Macdonell: How, if at all, does Sacramento figure in your presentation?
Chelsea Wolfe: Living there gave me the time and the platform to experiment with music. I’d been writing and recording songs since I was a little kid living in the oldest part of a suburb outside of Sacramento. When I was around 20, I moved downtown, got a job and tried to play music. I was not very good for a long time. I would play two or three songs, get freaked out and run off stage. I was writing songs that were so autobiographical they made me feel physically sick, so I decided not to write about my personal life anymore and to write about things outside of myself. Then I left [Sacramento] for a while with a good friend and great performance artist Steve Vanoni. He taught me about life and art and gave me a chance to start playing music in front of new and accepting audiences. I followed a tour of performance art shows in Europe and would play at the end of the night. Then I came back home to Sacramento and recorded The Grime and The Glow; then moved to LA soon after.
AM: Both your parents are musicians, and your father in particular encouraged and influenced your musical self-education. Can you speak to the important part your parents played in your evolution as an artist?
CW: My dad is a musician; he was in a country band while I was growing up. My mom doesn’t play music but is a very artistic person and turned me on to some good music—Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. Both of them were supportive of me playing music. My dad passed down guitars, pedals and amps to me, and my mom always pushed me to keep trying. Unfortunately, for some reason there was a voice in my own head telling me I wasn’t good enough to do this and be up in front of people. So I tried going to different colleges and finding a new path, but in the background I was always playing music. The fact that I finally gave in and pursued playing music full time is really the result of family and friends and people encouraging me—pushing me to record and put my songs out in the world.
AM: What’s the most unsettling comparison someone has made regarding your music?
CW: I think it’s annoying for any artist when a journalist states that you’re influenced by an artist who you’ve never listened to or been into. Even if that artist is great, it’s still just weird.
AM: Are you a used-record shopper? If so, any favorite places to search?
CW: If we have a day off on tour and a city has a cool record store, my bandmates usually want to go there so I’ll go too. I’m never that drawn to record stores, but once I’m there, it’s kind of mesmerizing to wander through. I like the classical section at Amoeba.
AM: Virginia Woolf said: “Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” How important to is you making a living as an artist?
CW: I am making a living as an artist, and it’s pretty crazy to me still. I feel really lucky and very thankful. But I also live pretty simple. I live on the outskirts, in the mountains—in part to get away from all the noise, but it’s also much more affordable out there. I can have a house with a yard for the price of maybe one bedroom in some cities.
AM: Do you consciously produce theatrical elements in your work?
CW: I’ve had an affinity for the dramatic since I was a kid. I was always shy so I could barely manage something like speaking in front of the class, but grand musicals were playing in my head at all times. I don’t think that making my music dramatic is a conscious decision. I think it just happens.
AM: In your filmmaking collaborations, what are the challenges and rewards as an artist in melding visual themes to your music?
CW: It’s very challenging. I struggle with photo shoots even. I can only handle like an hour of it and then I’m a bit done. But with filming you’re doing a lot more hours and there’s a lot more people involved, so it really broke me down when I was filming Lone—this series of emotional, surreal music videos with director Mark Pellington. It broke me down to the point that I was intensely real and vulnerable on screen, and it was hard for me to watch that later, to be honest. But at the same time I think it helped me to sort of accept myself more.
AM: How do you overcome self-doubt?
CW: It’s hard for me to get onstage sometimes, but I have to just say “fuck it” and go.
AM: After working alone, what adjustments do you make to work collaboratively?
CW: I go back and forth between the two very often. At this point, this project has become very collaborative even though it started as a solo project. When I write alone, I try to just set my mind and emotions loose and write in a very instinctual way. Other times my bandmate and main collaborator Ben (Chisholm) will be working on a song, and I’ll latch onto a certain part and encourage him to expand on it, and the song sort of grows from there.
AM: Can you compare the emotional experience of recording to the emotional experience of playing live in front of an audience?
CW: By the time I get to the studio I’ve spent months or years writing, curating and refining the songs for whatever album I’m going in to work on. So once I’m there, I’m pretty utilitarian about things and want to work and move the songs forward. My favorite part—and the part that causes me the most turmoil—is mixing, piecing all the elements together at the very end. I’m pretty particular about little sounds and how things flow, and I can make myself crazy about it. But it’s all very insular—just this intense experience you have with building for a month or whatever—and then you come out of it with a finished piece. Playing live in front of people, you’ve got to pull yourself together in order to fall apart again. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but you have to know the songs really well in order to really lose yourself inside them. And you have to feel really strong and confident in order to go out on stage and become a broken, real person in front of people. At least that’s how it is for me.
AM: Have you been mentored in navigating the business aspects of your career? How does an artist learn that skill?
CW: I have a great manager. I never really understood what a real or good manager did before I met Cathy Pellow. Her goal has always been to help me grow as an artist and be a career artist so that, hopefully, I can still be releasing music and playing when I’m grey-haired. It’s not that she tries to sway me one way or another, but she’s always there to guide as we navigate a path that is always kind of morphing and surprising us.
AM: Do you ever hear a song and think, “Man, I’d like to have written that”?
CW: I think the Iceage song “Forever” is really beautiful. When I first heard it I definitely had a sense of how did they do that?
AM: Has being “unclassifiable” helped or hurt you in reaching your audience?
CW: I imagine that it has helped. We’ve been accepted in many different worlds. I feel grateful for it.
AM: Who among your contemporaries isn’t being heard as widely as they should be?
CW: Screature. They just released their second album, Four Columns. They’re hometown friends from Sacramento who blow me away with how multi-talented and rad they all are, and their band is really fucking good. I want more people to hear them because I think other people will enjoy them too.
AM: Is the range of music you listen to for pleasure as wide and varied as the range of styles you write and play?
CW: Even more. Most of the time I’ll put on Scientist records for hours, and that puts me in a trance. Then I’ll listen to Wardruna or maybe Aphex Twin depending on my mood. I make mixes on Spotify, kind of in themes—I have one that is Tricky, soundtrack music from Werner Herzog films, John Fahey, Colleen, Abner Jay. I find familiar things in all different styles of music.
AM: How big would your ideal audience be for a live performance?
CW: Ideally it’s great when the audience is full of people who like your music and just want to be there with you to experience it. Hopefully it’s in a theater or hall with some nice sound and old feelings and good energy. I’d say all that comes before audience size.
“Living here feels a bit like The Walking Dead,” says Chelsea Wolfe.
The 31-year-old artist moved to the mountains north of Los Angeles to record her latest album, Abyss. She wanted out of the city, and thirsted for a place that was quiet, desolate and surrounded by nature.
She set up shop up in a big empty barn, recorded her demos, and never left the area. In fact, she can’t imagine herself living in a city ever again. She now lives nestled in a blend of high desert and green mountains and is at peace with her decision, especially since she can finally sleep.
Wolfe, whose trademark music blends drone, metal and folk, has suffered from bouts of sleep paralysis since she was a child – an experience which created the basis of her new album. The 11 tracks are strung together to make the listener feel like she’s diving head first into her nightmares, only to re-emerge gasping for air and take the plunge again.
Wolfe wanted to capture that specific feeling of waking up briefly, and falling back asleep into the same dream state (the end of the album’s eponymous song, a full minute and a half of strings punctuated by piano, evoke someone finally losing their mind).
Sleep paralysis – a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep – affects people differently: some awake only to find it impossible to move a muscle, some see apparitions – grim reapers, ghosts or demonic figures. Others have terrifying auditory hallucinations: a presence clawing at their door, or an entity whispering threats in their ear.
I asked Wolfe about how the condition affected her. She described it as “waking up, and you can move your body and your eyes are open, but there are figures and people from your dreams still present in the room”.
While artists and writers throughout history have referred to the phenomenon as “the stranger”, Wolfe calls it “shadow figures”, for it’s how they appeared to her, slowly making their way towards her bed in the dark. At times, the apparitions were so real that she lashed out, and even grabbed a knife. “It’s an instant adrenaline rush at four in the morning, so it’s really strange,” she says. Worst of all, the feeling often lingered, creeping into her day, not leaving her side.
Living far away from the city, with all its noises and lights, has helped greatly. These days, she merely has recurring dreams – almost always a “life or death type of situation”.
With Abyss, Wolfe had carte blanche in the artwork department (she says Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare was her inspiration for the cover). This freedom might explain why her entire output – from her studio music to her live shows, album covers and outfit choices – make sense taken as a whole. So to echo the dark corners of Abyss, Wolfe stripped things back, wearing mostly black and utilitarian clothing.
It wasn’t always this way. When she first started performing live in her hometown, she found herself intensely nervous. One day, as she was scheduled to play a small show at a bookshop, she found that she couldn’t do it. Filled with angst and wondering how she was ever going to perform, she remembered the image of women in a Victorian funeral procession, dressed in long black garments that hid them from view.
She cut a veil out of an old lace skirt, and walked on stage wearing it. It worked. “I found that in a really childlike way, it helped me to feel more free, like if they couldn’t see me I couldn’t see them. So I stuck with the veil for a while, but eventually realized I wanted to be more brave, and started making eye contact with the crowd,” she recalls. This need to make her art public, countered by her intense need for solitude, has always followed her. “My entire life is a dichotomy,” she says.
For her last few releases, she explored clothing and fashion differently, using it “almost as armor, to feel stronger”. Dressing for a show felt like a calming ritual. It’s an art she takes pride in, and says she has learned a lot from the greats: David Bowie, Nina Simone, even The White Stripes. It’s what separates her output from singers, and puts her squarely in the “artist” category: her art is all encompassing, it inhabits her. Her live performances, her clothes, her Instagram: it is carefully curated and highly coherent.
Right now, Wolfe is getting ready to embark on a US tour starting at the end of the month, followed by Europe in October. Away from her cocoon in the California mountains, let’s hope slumber will come easily to her this time around.
Chelsea Wolfe may be known for her unique brand of “doom-drenched folk,” but her music taste spans generations and genres, as proven by her deep, abiding love of Aaliyah. Hot off the release of the critically-acclaimed, definitively metal-drenched Abyss, the singer also sat down with us for a brief chit-chat about exploring her sleep paralysis, her anxiety and a few of her favorite songs. Read our Q&A below.
I know you mentioned this album was inspired by your experiences with sleep paralysis, what was that like? How did it play into the writing of this album? Sleep paralysis for me comes in the form of shadow figures.. I wake up but the figures from my dreams are still in the room around me. It’s given me a lot of anxiety/paranoia over the years - it’s an intense way to wake up - but I never really addressed it before. For this album I was interested in exploring the subconscious and experimenting with dreams.
How did you start songwriting? Was there a particular experience you had that compelled you to start? Like listening to one of these artists you’ve included, for example. I grew up listening to my dad play guitar and sing harmonies in his country band. He had a home studio where they’d practice and record. As a kid I wanted to record my own songs so he set me up with an 8-track. My sisters would sing backup. The vibe of those earliest songs was like, Aaliyah meets Fleetwood Mac - what I was listening to mixed with what my parents were listening to. “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number” was my favorite song then. Anyway, I was always writing and recording from a young age, and I never stopped.. It just took me a long time to get to the point of sharing my music and playing shows.
Each of your albums seem to tackle a distinct sort of subgenre of sound, what direction do you think is next? I have some ideas in mind, but I usually let the songs guide me, so we’ll see.
You also made us a playlist of some of your favorite songs, and I think can hear a lot of Abyss in here. If you could pick one stand-out song that best represents the vision you had while making this album what would it be and why. That Vladimir Vysotsky song, and specifically that performance of it, is something to aspire to. I relate to the seriousness of it all. I wanted Abyss to have moments of vulnerability and rawness in it. I had to let myself become a little broken.
Can you walk us through each track you picked. What special significance do they hold for you?
“Poppies” by Buffy Sainte-Marie: A friend in high school bought the “Illuminations” record because she was intrigued by the cover photo. I don’t remember listening to it back then, but the album cover stuck in my head. I re-discovered her a few years back and felt a kinship, especially with “Poppies.”
“Capricious Horses” by Vladimir Vysotsky: Thankful to whoever turned me on to him. I’m obsessed with this video.
Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number by Aaliyah: My earliest songs as a kid were influenced by Aaliyah.
My Middle Name is the Blues by Abner Jay: His songs and melodies are so beautiful, descriptive and heavy.
S:H:S by True Widow: One of the best bands around. Best friends too. Their music can put you in a trance.
Issue 1406 of CMJ features none other than Chelsea Wolfe on the cover, as Abyss is the most added album in college radio!
You can order your copy on her online store HERE, and see her on her US and EU tours this fall - multiple shows have already sold out, so don’t wait! Click HERE for a full list of dates and ticket links.
Click HERE to see a list of reviews about the album.
The video for “Carrion Flowers,” a shivering dirge that opens Chelsea Wolfe’s recently released fourth album, Abyss, like the beast slouching towards Bethlehem, is nightmarish. Black oil leaks out of tree bark, Wolfe’s eyes and mouth crackle with white lightning, and the camera pans over abandoned farmhouses lit from behind as though by a nuclear mushroom cloud. It’s not hard to believe such hair-raising images came from the California-born and -bred musician, who has suffered much of her life from sleep paralysis, a terrifying condition in which the mind half-wakes up — often hallucinating shadowy figures left over from the previous night’s slumber — while the body remains immovable. But when she’s presented with this potential connection, Wolfe very politely says that’s not the case at all, actually. In fact, she says, “I almost asked my friend, who wrote the bio, to take out that out of the finished version” — for fear that journalists (such as this one) would latch onto it.
Now that she’s living by herself about 90 minutes north of Los Angeles’ madding crowds of automobiles and the golden-limbed people who drive them, Wolfe’s sleep has settled, along with the rest of her life. With the massive, misty woods of Northern California standing between the 31-year-old and the city she used to call home — and with a nearby biker bar to hang at when she wants to watch TV or enjoy the company of other locals — she’s started writing again, but this time in a separate room rather than in her bed, and without a population of ten million people to distract her. Sipping on a Moscow mule at downtown L.A. watering hole Tony’s Bar, close to her former practice space, Wolfe tells me thatAbyss was also recorded outside city limits, at the studio of producer John Congleton (Angel Olsen, Lower Dens) in Dallas, Texas last year.
“Usually we’re a pretty self-produced band,” she says in an email exchange later. “We work out demos and parts well before we step into the studio, and it was no different this time, but we wanted to bring in an outside influence for this record and John was on our mind already. So when he reached out to us, it felt something like fate. It was important to me to keep this album raw and heavy, and John pushed it even further in that direction.”
The decision to smolder even more fiercely than on her previous albums was also partially inspired by Wolfe’s stint on tour last spring opening for Eels, following her 2012 album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs. “[Performing] was really hard for me,” says Wolfe, who has always struggled with stage fright, an affliction she used to mediate by wearing veils and other cloth coverings onstage. At one point she recalls crying while sitting onstage, strumming her guitar in the spotlight, because she was feeling so vulnerable without her usual wall of noise. After that, she thought “f—k it,” and invited the rest of her band to join her for the next performance, the lot of them screeching loud enough to rattle a dungeon’s iron bars. The Sacramento native swathes herself in protective layers of sound for two reasons: to keep at bay her terror at singing in front of a live audience; and to shield her from the emotions of those around her, which affect her so much she believes that’s why she’s been having such trouble sleeping.
By this point her stage fright is mostly a thing of the past, although she admits her fascination with fashion “can be a form of armor on the road, for sure,” she emails me later. Wolfe is partial to dark fabrics and lipstick and horsehair bracelets so long they touch the ground. “The ritual of getting dressed for a show is important. You start to get centered and focused on what you’re there for and it always helps if you’re wearing something that is special to you or makes you feel good,” she writes. As for her other great struggle, even as she shies away from the notion that her sleep paralysis is the axis around which her new album revolves, Wolfe has written verses that nonetheless read quite personal: “I’m so tired, I’m so tired / Dragged out in the weather / Dragged out in the madness / Dragged out in your loneliness” on “Dragged Out” would seem to refer to the effects of severely disrupted slumber. It’s a ways from how she started playing music nearly two decades ago, with her two sisters, each of them pretending to be famous singers in front of a Camcorder with names that started with Z — aliases she conveniently can’t remember now. “That’s a scoop,” she says, laughing. Since then Wolfe has been intermittently taking voice lessons (“I should probably be doing it more regularly,” she admits), honing her howl so that now it purrs and gasps mellifluously, giving even more emotional heft to her songs.
Mostly, though, she’s still focused on telling others’ stories. “Color of Blood,” which smokes at its edges as a deep, rattling hum of guitar feedback burns throughout, is a cover of fellow Angeleno and doom-y singer-songwriter Jesse K. Phillips’ “Arteries,” a Swans-like odyssey he released in 2014. “I gave it new lyrics and melody the first time I heard it, then asked him to let me cover it,” says Wolfe. “I’m glad he obliged. I love the feeling of the song and it was important for me to include it.” Elsewhere on Abyss, she tackles news items: The ocean floor-dredging riffs on “Iron Moon” are nearly as painful as the suicidal thoughts plaguing the real-life factory worker on which the song is based, much as 2013’s“The Waves Have Come” was inspired by the Japanese tsunami two years prior. “The world is pretty f—ked up and sometimes I’m trying to confront it and sometimes I’m trying to escape from it, giving stories an alternate, more idealistic ending,” she says.
Looking out over the Los Angeles “River” — a cement pipeline with a trickle of water where movie scenes are often filmed — she points out her old studio, a large building with big, empty panes of glass in the windows that glint in the setting sun. “That’s my old practice space,” she says, nodding and squinting behind her sunglasses. “Yep. That’s about all there is to it.” So we watch a car chase being filmed in the man-made ravine below us, egging on the stunt driver popping wheelies over and over again. “This place is actually pretty cool,” she admits. But nostalgia is fleeting, and tomorrow she’ll head back up north, where solitude among her guitars, potential future songs, and a good night’s sleep awaits.
