If anyone can channel that soft, grey division between wakefulness and deep sleep, it is Chelsea Wolfe, the LA songwriter whose commercial profile has noticeably risen in the two years since her previous album, Pain Is Beauty. Recognition has come via touring with Queens of the Stone Age and the playing of her song Feral Love on the trailers for season four of Game of Thrones and the TV adaptation of 12 Monkeys .
Abyss, Wolfe's fourth album, might just be the game-changer – it seems there finally is a semi- mainstream space for drone/ metal/art folk music with gothic overtones. Who'd have guessed?
Based around, as Wolfe describes it, "the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious", Abyss references the sleep paralysis that has afflicted its creator for years. The subject matter here, then, is serious, and the telling of it equally so.
Not for Wolfe the prettified blandishments of pop’s shellac veneer, but rather the inspiring words of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto: “Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”
The sequence of songs trade one dysfunction for another, set to a soundtrack that is equally influenced by anarcho-punk and paganistic folk (think PJ Harvey's early material covered by Crass). Wolfe delivers pieces that often weld you to the spot. Iron Moon utilises an ear-pinning loud-quiet- loud modus operandi that sucks listeners in and spits them out. Maw is a twisted nursery rhyme that lulls you into a false sense of security, and Crazy Love (not the Van Morrison song) is as darkly acoustic as it can get.
Capturing the worrying split between calm and anxiety, Chelsea Wolfe displays an unerring knack for transparency and clarity. As for Abyss? Dive in. Dare you! chelseawolfe.net
