CHELSEA WOLFE
Afflicted by anxiety, Chelsea Wolfe lifts the veil for her arresting fourth LP, Pain is Beauty
The notion of performance anxiety is a paradoxical affliction for a musician on the precipice of releasing their fourth LP in as many years. Case in point: American singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, to whom the spectatorship of the collective masses was (“I never considered myself comfortable in front of others, performing”) and still is to some extent (“It’s not something I’ve overcome, as much as accepted”) an occupational phobia.
To put things into perspective, at the time of writing, Chelsea recently performed at FYT Fest, a festival with a capacity of around 20,000 prying eyes and expectant gazes, in her native Los Angeles. This was the inaugural date of her umpteenth tour this year in support of an album, entitled Pain Is Beauty, which depicts upon its front cover her most explicit and preening photographical portrayal to date. In it she stands, face exposed, arms folded in trepidation and restraint, brow slightly furrowed in contempt of the incendiary red dress she wears in breach of her typically all black dress code. The re-imagining of her former self – the veil wearing, self-effacing enigma that was prone to mid-set mini-meltdowns – is holistically transfigurative, yet she’s still a far cry from the gregarious spotlight protagonist one might imagine, a role which has long eluded her.
“I just wished I could play music but be invisible or something,” Wolfe tells Crack regarding the introverted manner of her live performances circa her 2010 debut LP, The Grime & The Glow. “But I love playing with different ideas to fight that, different looks. The veil was something I brought in as a nod to funeral marches, but I realised it helped me to feel more comfortable on stage” she adds.
Death-clad and riddled with apprehension, it was Wolfe’s sophomore LP, 2011’s Apokalypsis – a doom-folk/black metal-indebted hybrid that channelled PJ Harvey to nearby plagiaristic measures while borrowing blankets of caustic reverb from Sonic Youth – that served to exorcise her demons. “Apokalypsis translates to ‘lifting of the veil’ as well as ‘revelations’”, she says of the title’s Greek etymology and ‘end of days’ symbolism, “so I felt it was a significant time to let the veil go.”
Despite this sea change and marked personal growth, Chelsea Wolfe 2.0 is still evocative of a 4am visit to your local crypt: doleful, isolated and bereft of any semblance of light. It’s a mood she continued to favour on her 2011 folk canon Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, a record which saw Wolfe compelled by vulnerability, but still drawn to the kind of bloodcurdling menace more akin to the suspenseful predictability of an 80s slasher film. Wolfe’s body of work has become synonymous with these deathly connotations, an affinity she attributes to visual reference points such as the 1957 Swedish drama-fantasy film The Seventh Seal. “I was introduced to the character of Death [from The Seventh Seal] by Ingmar Bergman as a kid, and the image crept into my consciousness for years” she says. “I have written songs about death, the afterlife, what it’s like to lose a loved one, because it helps me understand, learn and accept.”
Where Apokalypsis was concerned with metaphorical ruminations of our collective impending doom, creating gothic melodrama at every turn, and where Unknown Rooms had stripped those motifs down to the languished strings of an acoustic guitar, Pain Is Beauty is Wolfe at her most sophisticated, modernistic and fully formed. It’s here, on tracks such as the brooding four-note Moog stab of Feral Love and the lush digital orchestrations of House Of Metal, that the darkness is allowed to fully bloom. The 12 tracks could be a hymn to Portishead but veer towards the contemporary stylings of Zola Jesus, via a grief stricken Grimes affected by deep-rooted malaise. Bat For Lashes is also cross referenced on The Waves Have Come, all delicate piano climes and orchestrated strings beside Chelsea’s chilly choral vocals.
There’s a quasi-concept here, too, she maintains, which deals in reconciling with “ancestry, land, nature and memory” amid an undertow of “tormented love, separation and loss of love”. Pain Is Beauty marks a pointedly more humanistic and electronic approach, with Chelsea insisting that “I don’t put limits on myself musically and creatively” when asked about the preconceived themes and genres already associated with her music. A fine enough jump-off point for the next record then? “I’m always experimenting with different styles and sounds, so I’m sure I’ll do more electronic stuff in the future,” says Chelsea. “I choose songs that best fit together in one home though, regardless of genre.”
Wolfe’s semi-emergence from her supernatural underworld is another advance in a transition that spans four records, slowly peeling back the pallid layers of her personality for a bewitching collection of orchestrated gothtronica and sparse instrumental arrangements that retain the wraith-like nuances of her formative years, minus the Black Death. We ask her about the visual and sonic monochromatic colour palette that’s become synonymous with her identity, to which she replies with a quote from Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto: “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy – but mysterious. But above all black says this: ‘I don’t bother you – don’t bother me.” However you chose to interpret that quote, the fact of the matter is: Chelsea Wolfe has slayed her demons and most importantly, she’s bloodthirsty for more.
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Pain Is Beauty is out now via Sargent House
Words: Joshua Nevett
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