Chelsea Wolfe chats about Abyss, her new album of sultry vocals, sludge metal and drone. She also discusses her Dad’s country band, overcoming her fear of performing and how this latest album embraces distorted electronics and fuzz guitar to create huge dynamic shifts and gargantuan doom.
In teasing her forthcoming LP Abyss (out Aug. 7) these last three months, singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe is slowly mantling one of the fall’s most intriguing releases – and one that’s an apt follow-up to her 2013 breakout, Pain Is Beauty.
She continues to entrance with the release of “Grey Days,” premiering exclusively on Billboard.com.
As with her fourth full-length’s previous releases – “Iron Moon,” “Carrion Flowers” and “After the Fall” – “Grey Days” utilizes its droning, gothic production to dissect the nocturnal mind’s innermost cavities. Constructed around a looping drum kick and haunting viola by longtime Wolfe collaborators Dylan Fujioka and Ezra Buchla, the track doesn’t bear the same pronounced aggression as the California-based musician’s other fare. More a sorrowful lullaby built on industrialized distortions and wispy, howling vocals, it’s just as captivating.
“For this album I was interested in the subconscious, or unconscious mind, approaching it like a warehouse full of memories and emotions to be confronted,” Wolfe tells Billboard. “The title [‘Grey Days’] came from a conversation with someone I met on the road who had been in prison. He called that time his ‘grey days.’ It’s about something holding you back.”
The song’s verses describe a prisoner of oneself, a cell held shut by an internal weight – or as Wolfe says, a darkness. “In the song, [what’s holding you back is] represented very internally,” she says. “[It was] inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki film, Princess Mononoke, where darkness is represented by an iron ball as a sort of demon that ruins you from the inside out.”
“How many years have I been sleeping?/ How many hours did I throw away?” Wolfe sings. “Why does everything feel so unnamed?/ The poison inside helps me along.”
Rather than answer these lamentations, “Grey Days” succumbs to the addict’s dilemma, choosing to feel nothing as a means of getting by. “Like the morphine, you take it all away/ Pretend it’s ok.”
“I’m drawn to the peace in feeling nothing, but I’m also afraid of feeling nothing,” Wolfe says of this dark dichotomy. It’s one seen throughout her body of work. “The song is a battle.”
Chelsea Wolfe played the new song “Dragged Out” during a show in Amsterdam, and Converse Rubber Tracks Live did a great job capturing it. This song is off her upcoming album Abyss, to be released August 7th.
There are already lots of low ticket warnings for her North American fall tour, so buy tickets now (available HERE). A full list of shows can be found below.
Chelsea Wolfe North American Tour Aug 27 – Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar + Aug 28 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge + Aug 29 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater # Aug 31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club # Sep 1 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall # Sep 2 – Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop # Sep 3 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace Sep 4 – Montreal, QC @ Theater Fairmont Sep 5 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair # Sep 9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg # Sep 10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts # Sep 11 – Washington DC @ U Street Music Hall # Sep 12 – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival # Sep 14 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 # Sep 15 – Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge # Sep 17 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks # Sep 18 – Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s British Pub # Sep 19 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk # Sep 20 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler # Sep 22 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls # Sep 23 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad # Sep 24 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar # Sep 25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater # Sep 26 – San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center # Sep 28 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater # Sep 29 – Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s * Sep 30 – Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw * Oct 2 – Bellingham, WA @ Shakedown
+ with Upsilon Acrux # with Wovenhand * with Mamiffer
Onstage, Chelsea Wolfe stands tall, a grim reaper draped in dark fabrics. The music all but swallows atmosphere—Wolfe and her band can transform any room into a cavernous hollow with her celestial voice and manipulated, diverse guitars. One minute the drums are pounding while synths fuzz around the beat; the next, it’s just Wolfe’s soft whisper, amplified and bouncing off the ceiling. It takes most performers years to manifest the right look, but Wolfe accidentally perfected hers immediately. She was so shy when she started that she insisted on singing through a black veil.
“When I finally got the guts to let go of the veil and just make eye contact with the audience, it was very empowering,” Wolfe tells me over drinks in her current home of Los Angeles. “But my love of fashion and silhouettes did not go away. Dressing up helps me separate and prepare for the stage. I want to feel good about myself so I can just let go and be in the music.”
Following her debut release in 2010 (The Grime and the Glow, from Pendu Sound), Wolfe and her longtime coproducer Ben Chisolm gained critical media acclaim. And after years of touring with everyone from Deafheaven to Queens of the Stone Age and three more standout releases—including the most well-received LP thus far, Pain Is Beauty—Wolfe’s alternative sound has seen much of the mainstream. Her music has even been featured on HBO’s Game of Thrones. And at 31, the Northern California native is releasing her fifth and fullest studio album yet, Abyss (Sargent House). Produced by John Congleton (who has worked with musicians like St. Vincent and R. Kelly), Abyss is a dynamic orchestration of darkness that documents Wolfe’s foggy personal struggle with dreams, anxiety, and a troubling form of sleep paralysis.
“When it first started happening—heavily in my adulthood—I would scream and thrash because I thought the things in my dreams were in my room, actually coming toward me,” Wolfe explains. “It was only in the aftermath of [Abyss] that I realized how much this influenced the record.”
The new album is signature Chelsea Wolfe cathedral rock, but heavier, toying with tensions between industrial walls, and then diminishing into softer sounds. It’s the kind of album you want to play loud and alone. Wolfe grew up listening to her father’s country band. As a child, she says, she aspired to be a poet, and lyrics are still about as important to her as sound is. “I approach music in an instinctual way because I am not as technically trained as most,” she adds. “A song just has to feel right, emotionally and atmospherically. That’s my idea of perfection: when you can put headphones on and it feels like the song is swirling around you.”
Chelsea Wolfe has a cover feature in the newest print issue of New Noise Magazine – available to order HERE.
Don’t miss the chance to see her on her North American tour – tickets are available HERE, and a full list of dates can be found below.
Chelsea Wolfe 2015 Tour Dates: 08/27 – Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar * 08/28 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge * 08/29 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater # 08/31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club # 09/01 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall # 09/02 – Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop # 09/03 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace 09/04 – Montreal, QC @ Theater Fairmont 09/05 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair # 09/09 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg # 09/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts # 09/11 – Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall # 09/12 – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival # 09/14 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 # 09/15 – Nashville, tN @ Mercy Lounge # 09/17 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks # 09/18 – Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s British Pub # 09/19 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk # 09/20 – Dallas, TX @ The Kessler # 09/22 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls # 09/23 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad # 09/24 – Phoenix, AX @ Valley Bar # 09/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater # 09/26 – San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center # 09/28 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater # 09/29 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos # 09/30 – Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw )) 10/01 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown ))
Chelsea Wolfe is about a step away from becoming the biggest singer/songwriter of our generation. Her music embodies some warp between Leonard Cohen and Fiona Apple. In her new single for “After The Fall,” we see both the delicate and world burning sides of Wolfe. The music itself feels otherworldly in its production, going to lengths to make everything nearly blissful. When the chorus kicks in, everything goes crashing into the earth at a million miles an hour, the distortion of the synth becoming more and more massive with each second. The electronic crunch is the kind of noise you’d probably hear at the last concert before the apocalypse. Her voice effortlessly goes back and forth between these two modes, reminding us why she’s the best.
The lo-fi fuzz and red raw minimalism of Chelsea Wolfe’s 2010 debut outing The Grime and the Glow feel like a distant memory when listened to alongside Abyss. Her fifth and most tonally diverse offering to date, it serves as a fitting reminder of the sonic distance she’s covered over her deceptively short career, which, lest we forget, spans a mere five years. That’s five albums in five years; a prolific output in anyone’s book.
Perhaps this quick-fire approach can explain how she’s been able to arrive at her current destination in such an impressive time frame. These days, most artists struggle to put out a record once every two or three years; years spent ruminating on and refining material to the point that audible progress gets lost in the search for polished perfection. Yet, where others endeavour to cloak or eradicate the perceived blemishes and imperfections of their art with extensive recording and production sessions, Wolfe, it seems, is more concerned with capturing the emotion and intensity of the moment.
That said, the signature moves that make Wolfe and her work so unique are evident as ever throughout Abyss, blending all of the touchstones from each of her previous efforts and coaxing them into previously uncharted territories.
The result is a record that showcases Wolfe at her gothic, folk-infused best. Seamlessly woven between dense layers of crashing guitar and industrial electronica lie brittle vocals and disarmingly infectious melodies, shedding just enough light to offset the weight of the darkness.
How, then, did she and the band arrive at this new, all-encompassing sound?
“We are a band that is constantly striving to grow and try new things, but the way our sound has developed has been really natural and instinctual,” Wolfe explains. “I’m really lucky to play with such great musicians and working with my co-producer, Ben Chisholm, has taken this project in such a cool direction – we’ve been able to combine our inspirations to create something new.”
A different approach to recording also helped shape the sound of Abyss, with both a change of scenery and a closer working relationship with the album’s producer contributing to its more eclectic sound.
“I was more open to working with a producer on this album – wanted some fresh blood in the mix. We’ve always recorded in California, but this time we went out to Dallas for a month to record at John Congleton’s studio with him. Working with a producer automatically introduces a new element and even some tension to the recording. We always demo out all of our songs before we head into the studio, so sometimes it’s hard not to get attached to all the elements and layers there. In the studio it becomes a balancing out of things – the parts we initially came up with and new parts that are written in the studio.”
When it came recording the new material, Wolfe capitalised on an abundance of vintage equipment found in Congleton’s studio to achieve the tonal qualities she had been seeking.
“John’s studio is full of rad, old gear. We used little amps – a Matchless and an old Fender Princeton. We used a MiniMoog Model D for a lot of the bass synth, which made it super heavy.
“Most of the guitar was done on my Gibson ES 335, which I got last year, and Mike Sullivan played his parts on his beautiful Gibson Lucille. We also used a Fender Jazzmaster. We used a Therevox ET 4.2 on ‘Dragged Out’. It sounds terrifying to me, like hearing an air-raid siren but not so literal.”
So, how has her personal set-up changed over the years? Is she content with the arsenal currently at her disposal, or does she see herself as a collector of gear?
“I used to focus more on vocal effects pedals – running my M80 mic through guitar pedals and Boss loop station and my second mic (Beta 58) through a TC Helicon vocal pedal, but in recent times I’ve also gotten more and more into guitar pedals. I used to rely on the natural distortion of my amp (Fender Hot Rod Deluxe), but yeah, now I’m collecting tone and distortion pedals and it’s so much fun. I’m also playing through a Death by Audio Apocalypse, EarthQuaker Talons, POG and more. I’m also into Dwarfcraft pedals.“
And what of the effects deployed on Abyss? In recent years, artists have been increasingly relying upon iPhone and iPad FX apps during the recording process. Is this an approach Wolfe has embraced?
“Almost none of the effects on the album were produced in a computer or app, the exception being some digital reverbs here and there, but rarely. We used a range of guitar pedals and ran almost everything through them. A lot of EarthQuaker pedals, like Disaster Transport and Afterneath. We used MemoryMan 2s and Eventide pedals.
“Ben uses Ableton to create the vocal cut-up work, but even a lot of that was re-amped. I wanted the album to be raw and natural, and John pushed it even further in that direction.”
Wolfe’s traditional approach to recording is mirrored somewhat in her musical buying habits; opting, where possible, to purchase instruments from bricks and mortar stores, as opposed to online retailers.
“If I find a used instruments store or mom and pop-style music store I’m much more apt to go to that, but I also tend to hit the Guitar Center often for stuff too. I bought my newest guitar (the Gibson) from Ebay because I was looking for a really specific one – I had played one in a guitar shop at some point and fell in love, but I needed to save up for it. But I do prefer to just connect with an instrument in person, like I did with my Fender Jaguar. I’ve always loved Jaguars and Jazzmasters and when I saw that one sitting there, all natural matte wood with no pick guard, I knew it was true love, and I played that on the road for two or three years.
This emotional and physical response to music stems back to Wolfe’s formative years as a young child, citing access to musical instruments and music stores from a young age as crucial aspects in her development as a musician.
“I found my mom’s old classical guitar that she played in high school in the garage at some point and it became my favorite guitar to write on. One of the tuning pegs had broken off so I just tuned to that string. It was quite a bit lower because of that so from then on I tuned all of my guitars down to it, to D standard. It suits me better. My dad also passed down an acoustic Guild to me that I cherish and still write a lot on, and a lot of other gear. There were some used instrument stores in my hometown of Sacramento that I used to love to wander through, but they’ve sadly all closed.”
Wolfe is also of the opinion that a lack of independent music stores could have a significant impact upon the way future generations engage with music
“It might affect the way people connect to instruments or learn about them, maybe. You don’t meet very many sales people in large chain stores who really LOVE guitars and love talking about them, their history. I think that’s the thing we’ll lose out on. It’s a shame but it’s true of many types of businesses these days – bookstores, record shops etc.”
Released August 7th, Abyss could be seen as a fitting bookend to Wolfe’s output to date. It certainly feels like a definitive piece of work, encapsulating each of the key strokes that make up her signature. Either way, we probably won’t be made to wait too long to see where record number six takes her.
These are photos from our time in Iceland. We were there to play ATP but spent a couple extra days. Our hotel was on the outskirts, next to a huge moss and rock field leading to the sea. It was light out the entire time we were there so we didn’t sleep much – did a lot of exploring instead. The photos of people are overlaid with shots from the long walk in the moss field and also shots from the plane as we arrived. The colors in Iceland are incredible.
We often end up on the same festivals with our friends from Deafheaven and they were there for this one too so we did some touristy stuff with them and also shared a backstage at the festival. It was really inspiring to see Public Enemy and Iggy Pop play – both of their sets were on point.
All photos shot on a Fujifilm X10 by Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chisholm.
Carl Jung once claimed that “nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.” Chelsea Wolfe remains only partially convinced.
“I don’t really believe in dream interpretation. It just depends on how much stress is in your life, and your mind will work that out in its own way,” says Wolfe, L.A.’s reigning high priestess of permanent midnight music. “But even sometimes when things are going really well and calm, I’ll have crazy nightmares. It doesn’t really make any sense. The mind is a wild place.”
Wolfe’s songs skulk at the crossroads between dream and nightmare. Stoner metal riffs confront folky hymns; porcelain melodies weather gothic guitar tempests. They are myths remembered slightly too well.
Her new album, Abyss, features song titles to make the heads of therapists swivel: “Carrion Flowers,” “Iron Moon,” “Maw,” “After the Fall,” “Simple Death,” “Color of Blood.” The lead single is based on the suicide of a Chinese poet whose soul was crushed by sweatshop factory labor. Another was written after Robin Williams took his life. Her fifth album title comes from a passage in Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
“One of his dreams really resonated with me. Its first line was, “I let myself drop,’ and then it details an epic journey of him traveling through a cave,” the Sacramento native says. “I thought about how you could drop into your own mind and explore things that you don’t really think about or you don’t want to think about.” Jungian inspiration eventually led to the album’s title song, “Abyss,” which plays out like PJ Harvey laced with a poisonous string section.
It’s probably important to point out that Wolfe, the daughter of a country musician, isn’t nearly that bleak in person. Her occult fixations aren’t artificial, but neither do they reduce her to a dark-queen cliché.
Of course, she isn’t traipsing around in town in day-glo colors, either. This afternoon, sipping a Moscow mule at a bar in Highland Park, Wolfe wears a silver choker, matching rings and an oracle pendant. Her skin is pale; her gown is Morticia black. Many tattoos are visible.
“My white-trash background,” she jokes.
But given her Jungian interests, it’s difficult not to interpret the tattoos as ripped from a deeper collective unconscious, making her an archetype in her own right: a dagger, a trident, a moon, a raven, the Scorpio constellation.
A coiled, woodcut image of a snake looms most prominently on her forearm. For Jung, the serpent dream represented “the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche.”
Wolfe’s fixation with liminal states isn’t a recent obsession, but rather an attempt to reconcile a longtime struggle. She mentions a form of sleep paralysis, where she sometimes sees phantom figures in the room, usually around 3 or 4 a.m. Chronic nightmares formerly plagued her.
“There were times that I would wake up literally thinking someone was in the room, and I’d grab my knife,” Wolfe says. “It was dangerous.”
But a move from Pico-Union to the mountains north of the city seems to have pacified the condition. Her music remains sepulchral but slightly less claustrophobic. Still, it’s heavy as deep-lidded sleep, ideal for when the fuses are blown and you’re forced to navigate by shadows.
“Sleep and dream issues have plagued me my whole life, and I think this was my first album where I’ve confronted it and things inside myself — the things that are difficult to deal with,” Wolfe says. “Some of these songwriting sessions were really intense. I’d be writing lyrics and find myself physically shaking. I really felt like I had some sort of prophetic experience.”
Chelsea Wolfe Sounds Like: Lorde if she was actually goth, evil Björk on downers
For Fans of: PJ Harvey, Jarboe, Zola Jesus
Why You Should Pay Attention: She’s the reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock, romanticizing “Grey Days” and “Simple Death” in hazy, haunting songs that span grinding industrial, sparse folk, doomy metal and droning noise. It’s foreboding stuff — and yet Queens of the Stone Age took her out on tour and the producers of Game of Thrones chose a track of hers (2013’s “Feral Love”) for the series’ Season Four trailers. Wolfe’s latest record, Abyss, is her most intense and dynamic yet. “We’ve been touring a lot for the past few years so I think naturally I had it in my head that I wanted my new album to have songs that would translate well live,” she says. “And what I was writing about was really heavy, so even the more subdued songs have that feeling to them.”
She Says: The album’s heavy subject matter includes Wolfe’s lifelong struggle with sleep paralysis, a phenomenon in which a person is unable to move or speak while passing between wakefulness and slumber; it’s often accompanied by a sensation of bodily pressure or choking, as well as terrifying hallucinations. “I’ve always had sleep and dream issues, since I was a kid,” Wolfe says. “I’ve dealt with sleep paralysis for a long time and recently starting talking about it with other people, comparing experiences. I didn’t set out to channel it into the music, it’s just, I think having that connection to an in-between state for so many years started creeping into the way I wrote about things — sometimes the anxiety or strangeness of it would follow me into my day.”
Hear for Yourself: Wolfe strings gossamer vocals over metal-on-metal scraping and piston-pumping percussion on Abyss’ unnerving yet strangely seductive opener “Carrion Flowers." by Brandon Geist
