“I feel like I haven't gotten to play in Ireland enough. I'm so excited to come back. And I always feel like the audiences there are special and just really lovely, and I love being there,” says Chelsea Wolfe ahead of her two Irish dates this weekend. A sold out show this Friday in Dublin's Button Factory, followed by an appearance in The Limelight 2 in Belfast on Saturday.
If there was one word to summarise Chelsea Wolfe’s journey as an artist, it would be “metamorphic”. Possessing an unmistakeable soprano voice, and a knack for illustrative lyricism, her music has evolved exponentially since her lo-fi 2010 debut The Grime and the Glow.
2011’s Apokalypsis masterfully blended gothic and folk rock sounds, while 2012’s Unknown Rooms showcased her ability to captivate with minimal backing. 2013’s Pain is Beauty saw the Northern California embrace electronic elements, which she would juxtapose with heavier sounds on subsequent albums Abyss (2015) and Hiss Spun (2017). Not one to rest on her laurels, Birth of Violence (2019) would see Wolfe employ a weather beaten, gothic country style.
On 9th February 2024, Wolfe released She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, arguably her most immense and accomplished album to date. Taking the most powerful elements of her gothic, doom-laden sound, she succeeds in twisting and turning them in an audacious new direction, incorporating glitchy trip-hop overtones and chilling vocals.
Produced by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, Wolfe tells us he was picked from a shortlist of potential candidates due to his recognition of the songs’ singularity, and his ambition to make them even more so.
“Sitek recognized that these songs were kind of weird because they really were. In demo version especially, they were mostly these sort of heavier rock songs, and had weird arrangements and stuff. And then he wanted to make them even more weird," says Wolfe noting.
"I was into that idea of them transforming after being in this one state for a really long time. The headspace I was in, I was open to that as well, and not, you know, resisting it, which was a good thing”
The album has spawned two sister projects. Her Undone EP, which features remixes of tracks from the She Reaches Out album, was released in August. A follow-up EP, Unbound, will be released next month, and will feature acoustic and piano-led versions of some of these songs.
In a conversation we had with the incandescent singer-songwriter over Zoom, Wolfe explains the inspiration behind this tryptich of sorts.
“It happened really naturally. I had just wanted to expand on this record more because I started writing these songs in 2020 and didn’t get to record them until 2022 so it kind of felt like doing remixes and these acoustic versions were my way of reconnecting with the songs.”
She would further explain that inspiration came from a friend. Mat Auryn, author of international bestseller Psychic Witch, would write the bio for the album and eventual tryptich. Witchcraft itself is something that Wolfe has recently embraced as a positive force in her life, one that would ultimately guide the creation of She Reaches Out.
“It was a big part of my healing process as a person. I got sober from alcohol during the pandemic, and that was a similar timeline to getting more into witchcraft and more into tarot, and using the tools of a simple witchcraft practise to heal myself alongside therapy and traditional things like that.”
“For songwriting, it was a lot about creating sacred containers to write and setting the space, and being really intentional about writing and not just diving in with messy energy... It was just like a different approach for me.”
Wolfe has been commendably candid about her sobriety in interviews in the run-up to and after the release of her most recent album. The decision, she tells us, “was something I knew I needed to do for a long time.”
“I just felt like I was in a state of fogginess. It’s not so much the drinking, but the constant state of hangover that fogs up your mind and thought processes. I was staying in a lot of toxic relationships, toxic patterns with myself. I think that I knew I needed to make some sort of big decision in order to break away from all of that.”
Wolfe has now been sober for four years, and summarises her newfound sense of clarity, explaining “I essentially cleared up a lot of space for me to face some of the shadows in my life that I was just allowing to be there and just having a few drinks to sort of like let it all swim away or whatever.”
She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She is in itself a cathartic statement about cutting ties. While on previous albums, Wolfe was content to suggest emotions rather than announce them through the cinematic quality of her lyricism, this time around it is altogether more self-effacing. This vulnerability, she tells us, is one she finds liberating, and one that she hopes listeners can, too, embrace.
“Before this era, I was a really private person, and I still am. But before, I was too guarded, and I didn’t want to talk about why I was writing certain things, and I kept things very cryptic. It’s been very freeing for me to talk openly about my experiences, what these songs are about, what they mean to me, and how they’re so much about just allowing yourself to be in this in-between, liminal space.”
“We always like to know exactly what we’re doing next and where we’re going and as I’m writing this album, I’m letting myself be in this sort of in-between. I don’t actually know who I am. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing next, but I’m okay with it.”
Wolfe encourages others to do the same, she says, “because I know it can be a good part of a process of finding your authenticity.”
“I think that word’s overused right now but it’s pretty real. I think as someone who was in a toxic business relationship with the music industry, there’s always a lot of voices telling you what you should be and what you shouldn’t be and how you should use your gifts. I’m in this point where I’m just like ‘I’m going to use my gifts in the way that I want to use them and it might not look exactly the same as it always did, but that’s okay.”
This in-between space Wolfe mentions is something she would explore quite literally on the album. ‘The Liminal’, a highlight and one of the album’s most self-effacing moments, boasting lyrics like “I’m the storm and I’m the center... I’m the future, I’m the former”. Embracing the unknown, Wolfe tells us, has influenced her both personally and musically.
“When I wrote these songs, it was almost like my future self giving me a guide because I don’t feel like I was in the liminal space yet. I hadn’t left some of the toxic relationships, I hadn’t stopped drinking yet. It was almost a guide to actually be able to make some of these decisions.
"Now that I’ve been living in the liminal for a while, I am more at peace with it, and I’m almost like more excited about the idea of when you create a void in your life, when you let something or someone that you really need to let go, then it opens up so much possibility and mystery, and that can be really exciting.”
Pre save/order Unbound here