L.A. songwriter talks about her bleak sound, beaten-up instruments and more

Los Angeles songwriter Chelsea Wolfe makes dark, haunting music. Her instruments sound worn and beaten. Her voice is low and fragile. Her lyrics explore themes of mythology and death: She says her song “Sunstorm” is about the intensity of being with someone when they’re about to slip away, and the responsibility of hearing their last words.

Her new album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, compiles nine “once-orphaned” songs that she’s written over the past five years. While it doesn’t have the post-punk vibe of her previous album, 2011’s Apokalypsis, the new collection manages to sound just as dark and foreboding, if not more so.

In time for her performance at Tijuana’s All My Friends Music Festival on Saturday, I interviewed her over email while she’s been touring overseas: 

You’ve said in interviews that you spent a while making music before you took it seriously. How did you arrive at this bleak, dark sound? Was it something you arrived at after a while, or did you set out from the beginning?

I always understood that I wanted to make music that was honest, stark, and open, but yes, I spent a long time making music before I fully realized my vision. I felt quite lost musically and unhappy with my own work, so I stepped away from music for a while around 2008-2009. Around then I got invited on a European tour with a group of performance artists and I came back home inspired to look back to the beginning and start over. That’s why I recorded my first album, The Grime and the Glow, on my Tascam 8-track, which is what I’d always written my songs on.

When you write your songs, do you ever imagine what you’d like listeners to be doing as they listen? Do you have an intended context for your music?

I only imagine an intimate experience. I don’t listen to a lot of music, but when I do, I find something that really strikes my interest. I usually spend time listening to it alone. In that way I think someone listening to your record is more personal than the live setting.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something kind of medieval about some of your music. When I listen, it feels like I’m traipsing through a haunted Shakespearean forest. Is there anything about the Medieval era that you’re attracted to?

I’m very attracted to ancient times, yes. My next record I’m working on is heavy on themes of ancestry and mythology and how it translates into our modern personalities and moods.

For Unknown Rooms, what made you want to put all these “once-orphaned” songs on one disc?

I started working with [L.A.-based label and management company] Sargent House earlier this year and Cathy (Pellow) brought up that I had all these acoustic/folk songs on YouTube, etc., that were some of her favorite songs. But they had never been released, there were just live performances or old demo recordings. Anyway, she had the idea to release these old recordings, but as I was gathering them, I decided to re-approach most of them and make new recordings. Then I ended up writing new songs for the album as well.

Even though they’re acoustic, the songs on Unknown Rooms have a very oppressive, claustrophobic feel (but in a good way, of course). How did you approach recording and producing the songs?

Maybe I captured some of the feel of my surroundings—it was made in home studios and makeshift studios. Small, homey spaces. I just read Damien Echols’ book, Life After Death, and there’s a great line in there that I really resonate with: “It’s not the ghost that haunts the house; it’s the house that haunts the ghost.”

The song “Appalachia” feels really country. Did you set out to write a country tune or is that how you arranged it after writing it?

In my head a lot of my songs sound country, but this one actually came to sound country on the recording once I had my friend Daniel Denton play bass on it. Ben Chisholm (who produced the album) played drums on it as well and their playing totally changed the vibe into something different than when I first wrote the song.

I love the sound of the piano in “Sunstorm.” How did you make it sound so brutal?

It was just an old electronic piano. I appreciate instruments that are slightly fucked-up or out of tune.

What’s that keyboard-like sound on “Boyfriend”? It sounds like some kind of weird evil synthesizer.

That’s Ben’s beloved Juno. It’s been through some shit.

By Peter Holslin

Chelsea Wolfe will be playing her first time in Mexico in Tijuana as part of the All My Friends Festival on November 17th, 2012. See All Info and full lineup HERE

Often compared to Zola Jesus, Wolfe’s gothic/black metal/folk musical style is soundly reflected in her understanding of reality, with her music simultaneously so arrestingly divine yet so droningly devilish.

“One of the things that really inspires me is the contrast between the light in humanity and nature, the beautiful side and the intense side. When I think about something and it can be so dark, and it can be so beautiful, and at any moment, something wonderful and amazing is happening,” says Wolfe.

On the topic of light versus dark, I bring up an interview with Prince where he contemplates the idea that the dark side is more interesting than the light side. I suggest that perhaps the light side is more fun, but the dark side is more interesting.

“I agree with that, yeah,” she laughs. “Definitely. I mean, it’s something that comes naturally over the years, even when I was a kid. It’s not that the dark side is more interesting, but just that I’m interested in knowing what’s really going on, and the stuff that’s hidden tends to be darker.”

Her notion that the veiled aspects of life tend to be darker is reflected in the nomenclature of her second record, Ἀποκάλυψις (aka Apokalypsis), which is Greek for uncovering/revelation. Just as I found Ἀποκάλυψις quite chilling, I wondered if she felt a similar reaction to the album, and if there was no hint of fear, what was it that made her scared?

“I can’t really think about it in terms of being scared. A lot of people consider my music scary, but I don’t think about it that way; it’s about facing reality. I suppose the scariest thing is loss of someone that you love,” she says.

Wolfe’s approach to music was partly influenced by her travels in Europe with a nomadic group of artists, performing at bizarre venues such as cathedrals and old nuclear plants.

“Well I had kind of taken a break from music, in 2008 or 2009 I wasn’t happy with what I was doing and just felt sort of tired of it. A friend of mine invited me to come along with a group of other artists to tour with in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia and I was sort of the resident musician in this group of performance artists. At the end of each night I would play…it was a really inspiring time. Part of it was hearing my voice in different places and experiment with different sounds in the spaces, and having an audience that was really open to our music. It was really good to gage what I felt comfortable with and what was the right path for my music. It was a really good time for me and I came back and recorded my first album I released after that.

“I think I finally learnt how to become comfortable with my own voice. It was special to play in all these different places and hearing my voice in a different way and opening up to that.

Following the release of Ἀποκάλυψις, Wolfe was discovered by the (brilliant) Los Angeles-based label group Sargent House (who also look after Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Russian Circles). This past week, Sargent House have released an album of Wolfe’s acoustic material that she had been developing sporadically throughout the past few years.

“They’re incredibly supporting. For someone who has a background in being incredibly shy and not always believing in myself, it’s great to be in a place where you’re encouraged to do whatever…I really appreciate that”.

Next year, Wolfe will follow up the acoustic album with her third official studio album (as yet untitled), also to be released on Sargent House. Melburnians will have the chance to experience her dark lyrical beauty when she visits in early November, where she’s excited by the “newness of it all”.

“I’m interested in a genuine experience. I really like to meet people that come to the shows and then have a real connection with these people…most people don’t come to my show to be cool or to go to a show, they come because they want to experience it, and that’s important me.”

BY NICK TARAS

“Unknown Rooms is very, very accomplished, giving the sense that Wolfe has realized the extent of her own ability and acted on it. ” – The Quietus (UK)

“Unknown Rooms is spare, gorgeous, and haunting, offering surprises for her established fans and likely winning her new ones in the process. ” – All Music

”Unknown Rooms also veers away from the sense of the occult that pervaded her past two releases, especially Apokalypsis. It is certainly still haunting, but in a much more subtle, innocuous and emotionally effective way. The somber tone feels as if it’s coming from a more relatable place, a place of heartbreak, and we are left to be swept away by the ebbs and flows of Wolfe’s awe-inspiring voice without fear of subscribing to anything sinister.” – Paste

“Unknown Rooms might be a stylistic sidestep for Wolfe, a dalliance with a simpler set-up, before she plunges back into the icy black again. But even if she goes full-on Carrie-at-the-prom next, it seems likely she’ll only continue to gather force.” Pitchfork

Chelsea Wolfe, in previous efforts, emitted darkness and dread with many different influences and sounds. On this release, she strips it all down and leaves herself on the table, bare-bones and all. Creating more and more mysticism and symbolism within these acoustic tracks, she skillfully creates one of the most jarring and interesting releases of 2012.” – Skrbblr

“I have always been a fan of Chelsea’s work, but this stripped-down album showcases her voice better than I have heard her before. Every song on Unknown Rooms leaves my ears transfixed, waiting for the next song to come on. Listening to this album teleports my mind to another space and time. I’m starting to feel like I’m looking out of a window on a long cross-country drive and all I can see is the terrain moving to the melody of the wind. Chelsea has created an album that will empower the listener. The melodic elements of this collection of songs will enchant you for sure. Give credit were credit is do she really knows how to write stellar songs that will creep inside of your bones and stay there for a long time.” – CVLT Nation

“This is a sparse album, Chelsea Wolfe’s quietest, most beautiful album to date, showcasing a vulnerability that simultaneously pushes the listener’s comfort level to its limits and is sincerely inviting in its simplicity.” – Tiny Mix Tapes

After two solid albums that received a moderate amount of attention in the crowded contemporary music scene, Chelsea Wolfe has quickly returned with her best record yet, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs. It stands apart from the noisier mode of her previous work while finding her successfully expressing her own voice. The only problem is that it’s over far too soon. – The Vinyl District

“Unknown Rooms suggests this LA singer is a real songwriter of note. Chelsea Wolfe revels in the darkness, she’s at home in the haunting. This collection should have a place in yours.” – Hot Press

“Layered with hums and ghostly harmonies, Unknown Rooms resonates almost as a film score, channeling a country-singed Portishead intensely with the airy “Appalachia”. “Boyfriend”, in particular, reverberates as an homage, as though created to accompany the heroic death of a tragic hero burning at the funeral pyre.” – COS

“On Unknown Rooms the LA based artist has allowed the ethereal and tenebrous layers to fall away, here Wolfe searches inwards with next to nowhere to hide. These acoustic based songs include ghostly harmonies and mournful string arrangements from a stripped down ensemble – they embellish and beautify the writing on the wall.” – Bowlegs

“Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs is a magnificent album that carries a very lucid and shinning aura from beginning to end, placing textures of sound into some of the most heavenly states. This is music of and for this age that goes far outside of genre, style, scenes or anything else that normally defines an artists purpose and place here.” – Sound Colour Vibration

“It’s a journey you’ll find yourself wanting to travel again and again. Albums like this are all too rare in this day and age.” – Shout 4 Music (UK)

“Deeply atmospheric, Unknown Rooms is a timeless, placeless album floats from speakers as if straight from a log cabin in the Ozarks, drums at their most acoustic and underwater strings underpinning a voice seemingly taking inspiration directly from the soul ” – The State (Ireland)

”Unknown Rooms may be short but it is an astounding collection of beautiful and poignant material. I really hope Chelsea Wolfe releases more material soon because this, my friends, is a great friggin’ album.” – American Aftermath

“Unknown Rooms might just be a stepping stone for Wolfe.  She’s got an incredible voice, warm songwriting and above all else, it’s hard not to be captivated by what she’s doing.  Put this one down as another great stepping stone into a quickly exploding career.” – Austin Town Hall

“Even unplugged, though, there’s nothing simplistic—musically, emotionally or otherwise—about Wolfe’s songs: beautifully abstract, intensely somber, aesthetically heavy folk dirges awash in aching string arrangements, buzzing bass notes and, of course, that voice.” – Ology

”Unknown Rooms is a well-crafted exploration – to borrow one of her own titles – of ‘Hyper Oz’, an acidic Kansas and a wild, overgrown dreamland. Across these nine tracks, Chelsea Wolfe romanticises and revolts against the frontier, dirties her voice with gritty coals and washes it clean with tears of mourning.”
–Wears The Trousers (UK)

The intensity we’ve come to admire in CHELSEA WOLFE’s music could not be further removed when it comes to this musical goddess engaging in conversation with Robyn Morrison about her upcoming Australian tour.  She’s softly spoken, humble and seemingly reserved. But maybe that’s because her music speaks volumes and there’s no need for a bombastic approach to getting her point across.

At the time of chatting to Wolfe, she explained that she was in the process of mixing the next album. “A couple of months ago we recorded the full-band album. It’s full of electronic songs, rock ‘n’ roll songs and some acoustic songs.  We’re hoping to have it done by the end of the year.”

But before getting into the details of the next release, CHELSEA WOLFE’s just released a full acoustic album titled, ‘Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs’.  She talks more about this release. “It originally started as an idea to take a lot of the old recordings and videos of songs that I’d never previously released and make them into a collection. As I was collecting those recordings, I started to write new acoustic songs. The album also has re-recordings of some older songs.”

Wolfe continues to explain her songwriting process. “I’m writing lyrics all the time,” she says. “I’m inspired by love or nature.” 

Wolfe performed at the legendary Roadburn Festival this year.  She shares some of those highlights. “We really had a great time. I didn’t expect anyone to be watching us but we had a room full of people. It was a really special experience.”

Looking towards the Australian tour, Wolfe explains there will be a range of songs to digest in their live set. “There will be songs from the very first album, most from the last full-band album and then one or two songs from the latest album. We’ve got two shows in Melbourne. One is an acoustic show and one a full band show.”

November tour dates with HEIRS

Wednesday 7th: Brisbane @ The Zoo
Tickets: www.oztix.com.au
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/505467499466868/

Thursday 8th: Sydney @ Oxford Arts Factory
Tickets: www.moshtix.com.au
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/365265973544973/

Friday 9th: Melbourne @ Northcote Social Club
Tickets: https://corner.ticketscout.com.au/gigs/824-chelsea-wolfe—-electric-show
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/391748174224275/

Saturday 10th: Adelaide @ TBC
Tickets: http://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=29507
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/214387368691136/

Sunday 11th: Perth @ The Bakery
Tickets: http://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=29508
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/214387368691136/

Monday 12th: Melbourne @ Northcote Social Club
Tickets: https://corner.ticketscout.com.au/gigs/859-chelsea-wolfe—-acoustic-2nd-show
FACEBOOK EVENT – https://www.facebook.com/events/391748174224275/

Chelsea Wolfe
http://www.chelseawolfe.net/