Chelsea Wolfe

Chelsea Wolfe reveals varied layers of shadow across her discography through her distinctive soprano and evocative visual sensibility. Her initial releases, including the 2011 effort Apokalypsis, featured spectral electric folk compositions, yet she quickly expanded her sonic palette. The 2012 collection Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs pared her arrangements down to intimate guitar settings, while Pain Is Beauty from the next year incorporated electronic textures. This otherworldly intensity suited the intense sonic explorations on albums such as 2017's Hiss Spun, which incorporated contributions from musicians affiliated with Converge and Old Man Gloom. Returning to spectral folk traditions via 2019's Birth of Violence, and delving into themes of renewal through the mesmerizing trip-hop environments of 2024's She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, she demonstrated once more her capacity to channel her music's profound emotional resonance in compelling new ways.

Raised in Northern California, where her father led a country ensemble and maintained a personal studio, Chelsea Wolfe absorbed music from childhood onward. At age nine she began capturing her own performances on an eight-track machine presented by her father, and by fourth grade she had resolved to pursue singing professionally. Early inspirations encompassed a wide range spanning Aaliyah and Fleetwood Mac, later extending to Nick Cave, Hank Williams, and Townes Van Zandt. In 2006, at age 21, she issued the self-released singer/songwriter pop album Mistake in Parting, yet dissatisfaction prompted a period of reevaluation.

Composing on her mother's classical guitar, retuned to offset a lost peg, Chelsea Wolfe cultivated a singularly haunted folk aesthetic. Following a three-month tour alongside a performance-artist companion through venues such as decommissioned nuclear facilities, she returned in 2009 and committed her material to tape with friends using a portable eight-track. After the limited-edition releases Soundtrack VHS/Gold and Soundtrack VHS II, Pendu Sound Recordings presented her formal debut The Grime and the Glow in December 2010. Around the same period she supplied a radically altered rendition of the Strokes' "The Modern Age" for a Stereogum-curated tribute, and her composition "Moses" provided the score for artist/director Richard Phillips' short film Sasha Grey.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Chelsea Wolfe tracked her second album Apokalypsis in a professional facility alongside musicians including Ben Chisholm, who emerged as her principal collaborator; Pendu Sound Recordings issued the set in August 2011. Her Roadburn Festival appearance in the Netherlands was documented on September 2012's Live at Roadburn. She entered the Northern California woods with Chisholm and additional players to record Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, released by Sargent House in October 2012. That year she also produced a series of Rudimentary Peni covers offered as a free download, later reinterpreting the material with her band at London's Southern Studios; the resulting January 2013 sessions yielded Prayer for the Unborn, her entry in Southern Records' Latitudes EP series.

Chelsea Wolfe reemerged in September 2013 with the electronics-oriented Pain Is Beauty, co-produced by Chisholm and featuring longtime associates Kevin Dockter and Dylan Fujioka. The album marked her chart debut, reaching number 22 on Billboard's Heatseeker Albums tally and number 25 on the Folk Albums chart. She subsequently joined King Dude for two split singles and guested on Russian Circles' fifth album Memorial. The 2014 hour-long film Lone, directed by Mark Pellington and built around Pain Is Beauty material, followed.

For her fourth album, August 2015's Abyss, Chelsea Wolfe redirected attention toward the doom-metal dimensions of her sound. Joining Chisholm, Fujioka, producer John Congleton, and Russian Circles' Mike Sullivan, the project topped the U.S. Heatseekers Albums chart and reached number 14 on the U.K. Independent Albums chart. The 2016 single "Hypnos" appeared next, and she and Chisholm participated in Blood Moon, a sequence of European collaborative concerts with Converge. Kurt Ballou of that group engineered Wolfe's fifth album Hiss Spun in Salem, Massachusetts. Incorporating drummer Jess Gowrie, with whom she had previously played, alongside Chisholm, Old Man Gloom's Aaron Turner, and Queens of the Stone Age's Troy Van Leeuwen, the 2017 release intensified the preceding album's weight. Another widely praised effort, it entered the Top Ten of Billboard's Top Hard Rock Albums chart and registered on charts in New Zealand and multiple European territories. Wolfe then contributed to Myrkur's 2017 album Mareridt and Deafheaven's 2018 album Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. After touring behind Hiss Spun she paused to recuperate and compose. Revisiting the acoustic textures of her earliest work, she enlisted Chisholm and Gowrie for Birth of Violence, issued in September 2019 and peaking at number five on the U.S. Top Independent Albums chart.

Chelsea Wolfe devoted the ensuing years to additional endeavors, among them Mrs. Piss, the forceful duo formed with Gowrie that delivered its debut Self-Surgery in May 2020, and the January 2021 collaboration "Anhedonia" with Emma Ruth Rundle. Months later she appeared on Xiu Xiu's duets album Oh No and supplied the track "Diana" for the Dark Nights: Death Metal comic soundtrack. September saw the release of a documentary chronicling the Birth of Violence tour together with "Green Altar" and a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," both captured during the album sessions. She also performed on Converge's November 2021 album Bloodmoon: I. Further work with composer Tyler Bates produced the soundtrack to the 2022 film X, merging her vocals with vintage synthesizers and additional 1970s sonorities.

Following her signing to Loma Vista Recordings, Chelsea Wolfe unveiled the September 2023 single "Dusk." Produced by Dave Sitek, the track merged crushing guitars with smoldering trip-hop rhythms and introduced her seventh album, February 2024's She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She. Working again with Chisholm, Gowrie, and Bryan Tulao in addition to Sitek, she mapped an internal passage of transformation through a spectral fusion of electronics and weighty riffs. ~ Heather Phares