Chelsea Wolfe: The Dark review – existential reflection goes from whisper to gothic scream
When Chelsea Wolfe was interviewed by the Guardian in 2015 about her fourth album, Abyss, she revealed that her music had been informed by the bouts of sleep paralysis she’d suffered from since childhood. The condition – a transitional state between being awake and asleep – affects sufferers in different ways. Some wake up feeling paralysed, others see ghosts or demonic figures. For the California-born singer-songwriter, it meant “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 your room”.
No surprise, then, that her music – a blend of drone, alt, folk, industrial and doom metal – had ended up so spookily unsettling. She appeared on album covers with pupil-less eyes, spoke in interviews about “following the path of witchcraft” and even covered Norwegian black metal act and convicted arsonist/murderer Burzum. She did have a sense of humour about it all, however, telling one interviewer, with a chuckle: “It’s not party music.” Since then, though, much has changed. Wolfe left Los Angeles for the mountains above the city – where she’s finally been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep. Sobriety since 2021 has also brought what she calls “a new clarity”. Both developments inform The Dark.
The sublime opener Cold is again driven by lack of sleep, but for entirely different reasons as she taps into the insomnia that can result from a fracturing relationship. “Baby, when I’m next to you / Feels so cold / And it’s hard to sleep / And it’s hard to feel so alone,” she sings, dramatically ending up feeling as if she is “crying underwater / Screaming at the surface”. With its strummed folk beginning, brushed drums and layers of piano and acoustic guitars, the yearning gothic ballad is closer to, say, Annie Lennox than Ethel Cain and sets the scene for this much more accessible ninth album which channels her darker urges into something more universal.
After 2024’s largely electronic, David Sitek-produced She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, Wolfe felt as if she was continually returning to “a version of my old self”. So The Dark turns to Grammy-winning producer/co-writer Jennifer Decilveo, whose credits include Hozier and Miley Cyrus, and returns to a core of guitar, bass and drums (alongside longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm). Drone and doom metal has almost entirely made way for brooding bass lines, wailing guitars, dramatic dynamic shifts and subtle orchestrations. The dreamy, gothic rockers recall Evanescence or, on Swallower, the Cure, while Wolfe’s haunting vocals literally span the spectrum from a whisper to a scream – or, on the driving, windswept Seethe, a blood-curdling howl. Her ethereal singing suggests, of all things, Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser fronting the Sisters of Mercy.
Now 42, the singer has talked about how The Dark has been driven by “letting go … being in my early 40s as a woman, growing older and wanting to be who I am now”. This process has involved letting go of old behaviours and toxic relationships as well as her old music, which has driven some emotionally powerful songs. In the beautifully sad I’m Not There, she tells someone: “It’s too late, we’re already strangers,” a sentiment which recalls Carole King’s It’s Too Late. In the slightly Lana Del Rey-ish Halo, she directly quotes Martha and the Vandellas – “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide” – another unexpected reference point from an artist with Wolfe’s history.
Wolfe subsequently disowned her more conventionally singer-songwriterly self-released 2006 debut Mistake In Parting as a “shitty breakup album”, but seems to be reacquainting with classic songcraft as well as allowing herself more warmth and introspection. The folky title track is a beautifully observed “love letter” to the comfort of the black (“Our love glows in darkness / In a world that feels so heartless”) which builds to a finale featuring Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa and former Nine Inch Nails bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen.
Death Is Not The End – not the Bob Dylan song – is a tender largely acoustic folk rumination on the afterlife. Wolfe gently whispers “I’ll see you again” as one might over a dearly departed’s coffin, before Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck lets fly with guttural, chilling noise. Dancer in the Sky is the closest Wolfe has come to an epic, anthemic love song, with an exquisite arrangement and a chorus made for people to sing along. In fact, a lot of these songs wouldn’t sound incongruous being performed before huge crowds holding phones or lighters in the air. Wolfe recently became the unlikely face of a perfume range (Ghosts, obviously) and is clearly edging towards to the mainstream, but after two decades at the culty coal face this powerful, mature collection should take her to a wider audience.
This week Dave listened to
Shearwater and Laurie Anderson – You and Your Dog
The Texans’ cascading clarinet, bass and cymbals make a beautiful backdrop for the art-pop legend’s moving reminisce about a beach walk and days long gone.
Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.
