There are very few artists today who are quite like Chelsea Wolfe. The California – born musician operates in the interzone between several genres, folk, doom- metal and electronica, that generally don’t mix in musical terms, but Wolfe manages to pull them together and transform them into a coherent sound that is uniquely her own. After starting her recorded career with debut record The Grime And The Glow, a largely – acoustic, country – inflected album, Wolfe has moved through various styles and sounds. Her latest album, 2015’s Abyss, is a tense, dramatic record, full of slow – burning, dark rock songs. It’s an album that demands your full attention when listening: certainly not something you can throw on as background music on a lazy afternoon. Abyss is probably the heaviest record she’s put out in her career. The thudding force of opening track ‘Carrion Flowers’, the asphyxiating power of ‘Iron Moon’ and the guitar snarl of ‘Color Of Blood’ all combine to create record that leaves bruises on your consciousness after listening. But there are softer moments on here too, slipping in like water through the cracks. ‘Crazy Love’ is almost a ballad, viewed though a skewed, paranoid lens, and ‘Fall’ harks back to her folk roots. The record draws on an immense range of inspirations, from Carl Jung’s autobiographical book Memories, Dreams, Reflections to her own struggles with sleep paralysis. Wolfe’s live show is as intense as her albums, so getting in the front row when she plays WOW this summer is an absolute no brainer. We caught up with her ahead of that show.
You’ve mentioned that your earliest attempts at songwriting were kind of trying to write something between R’n’B acts like Aaliyah and bands like Fleetwood Mac. So how was the development process between that and the dark folk style you had developed by the start of your recorded career on The Grime And The Glow?
When I was a kid I was just inspired by a mix of what I was listening to (radio R’n’B) and what my parents were listening to (Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell). But of course as I got older I got into more music, different music. My friend Jess Gowrie introduced me to a lot of great music like Nine Inch Nails, some black metal, when we had a band together in my early 20s. That influenced me a lot and then also just traveling around with folk artist Steve Vanoni, learning from him and other artists, and performing in all kinds of different spaces helped me to figure out my own voice and what I wanted to write about. It was a natural progression and also a return to my folk roots.
You recall in an earlier interview that you took a line (‘I let myself drop’) from Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, as a kind of motto or manifesto for the Abyss writing sessions, that you were going to drop into and explore painful and uncomfortable feelings you’d been avoiding. What made you want to explore these feelings, emotions, experiences for inspiration?
I knew that’s where the album was guiding me and I could have either pushed it away because it was uncomfortable or confronted it head – on, so I did that. The process of writing or creating something isn’t always easy, but that’s ok. Sometimes writing a song comes easily, sometimes you come out shaking or crying.
Do you think that sleep paralysis, being so traumatic, makes it very raw to write about, and therefore artistically interesting?
I wasn’t purposefully writing about sleep paralysis for most of the album. There were just nods to my issues with sleep and dreams here and there in different songs. The feeling of sleep paralysis is something that just carries into the day, into the music – the anxiety of it.
Musically, are the constantly shifting, changing structures and atmospheres of the songs on Abyss an attempt to mirror dreamspace? Songs like ‘Iron Moon’ can morph from heavy to airy and back again, in the same way that dreams swing between shapes, forms and moods.
Yeah, again that happened quite naturally, but in the studio I did strive to give the album a sense of the confusion of dreams or the afterlife, feeling trapped in a dream, being unsure if you’re asleep or awake.
Abyss continues a general trend in your musical evolution where your records seem to be getting heavier and heavier. Is having these kind of muscular soundscapes something that you think helps and suits the darker lyrical themes more?
It was more because of the live show. My band and I tour a lot and we’ve toured with a lot of heavy bands that were really inspiring – Russian Circles [Wolfe contributed guest vocals to their 2013 track ‘Memorial’], True Widow. We knew we wanted to make a record that would be fun to play live.
You’ve spoken about having extreme stage fright at the beginning of your career. Have you grown more comfortable with it now, after several years of touring and playing live?
Yeah, there were times in the past when I’d play three songs and have to leave the stage. Practising anything helps you get better at it obviously, so I’ve just kept pushing myself to keep touring. There was a point where I realised that if I wanted to take this seriously, I was going to have to accept the live show as a big part of it. And I wanted to be able to experience the music in that way as well, and share it in that way. Now and then it’s still difficult to get up on stage, but I also have amazing experiences on the road that makes it all worth it, and feel really lucky to have this be what I do.
Of course, on April 1 you put out the ‘Hypnos’/ ‘Flame’ split single. Do you see that as a continuation of the Abyss era, or a move towards something new?
Well, those two songs were recorded during the Abyss sessions so they’re definitely B – sides from the album. I’m always writing different styles of songs all at the same time, I can’t help myself. Even now, I have a group of heavy, rock songs and a group of acoustic songs that I’ve been working on and I don’t know which type of album will come next.
Of your non – musical influences, you’ve obviously spoken about the role of the Memories, Dreams, Reflections in this album. What other non-musical influences and art fed into the making of Abyss?
The movie What Dreams May Come [1998 fantasy drama directed by Vincent Ward and starring Robin Williams] was an inspiration for a couple of songs on Abyss. The poetry of Xu Lizhi [Chinese poet and one of a series of workers at the Foxconn electronic manufacturing plant who committed suicide, which led to a media scandal around the company. Xu’s poetry, published by his friends after his death, includes a poem with the line ‘I swallowed a moon made of iron’] inspired ‘Iron Moon’ – it was a sort of tribute to him.
Finally, what can we expect from your performance at Way Out West?
We’re playing a lot of songs from Abyss and also some older tracks from Apokalypsis (Wolfe’s second album). They feel related in a way. It’s a rock n roll set!
Words: Austin Maloney
Chelsea Wolfe’s latest album, Abyss, is out now on Sargent House. Chelsea Wolfe plays at 2015 on Thursday on the Linne Stage.
This article originally appeared in Totally Gothenburg.
