Written for www.7bitarcade.com
Every so often an artist with a unique sound is unveiled to the music world, and in 2010 this saw Californian born Chelsea Wolfe release her debut album The Grime and the Glow, which along with Apokalypsis the following year established herself as a doom ridden singer songwriter with a difference.
Of course there are always going to comparisons along the way to fellow female artists, but with Wolfe there is always hidden depth to her songs and maybe this is why a slightly more stripped back Unknown Rooms: a Collection of Acoustic Songs was the first release for Sargent House Records whist the finishing touches were being completed to Pain is Beauty.
This album however kicks off with ‘Feral Love’ where Chelsea Wolfe’s gothic vocals sweep over a subtle backdrop and includes an early hint that Wolfe has taken a slightly different approach to her forth full length release – one that incorporates a more electronic direction.
If you’ve been a fan from the beginning then next track ‘We Hit a Wall’ won’t leave you disappointed as it returns to her early days based around guitars/bass/drums, whereas ‘House of Metal’ and ‘The Warden‘ has Ben Chrisholm firmly in the mix adding synths to Chelsea Wolfe’s sound to create an early industrial/eighties electro feel to the album.
Throughout ‘Pain is Beauty’ Wolfe’s voice is often layered on top of itself, as is the case on the eight minute ‘The Waves Have Come’, a track which takes a couple of listens to appreciate how much is happening during the tune whilst still showing the bleak and emotional side to Wolfe’s body of work.
There is definitely something naturally beautiful in Chelsea Wolfe’s voice though, which is captured in the sparse yet well produced ‘Sick‘ and it really is the production on this album that helps craft it into Wolfe’s artistic vision.
Whilst continuing to steer back to her earlier sounds on the odd occasion, this album has a sense of evolution with Chelsea Wolfe continuing to be an artist that isn’t easily pigeon holed (unless you can find “drone-metal-art-folk” as a valid place to file your collection) and with ‘Pain is Beauty’ this could potentially be a stepping stone into even more new territory, whilst making it clear that this is still very much a Chelsea Wolfe record.
Overall her band have created a more diverse mix of songs in comparison to earlier releases whilst keeping her voice haunting throughout and in the same vein of her first two albums and as such it is likely to keep her current audience intrigued and interested, whilst potentially drawing in new fans along the way.
