Album Review : Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (2024)
American singer-songwriter and musician Chelsea Wolfe is a very precise kind of pleasure. She writes intense gothic dreamscapes for moody, melancholic millennials who haven't quite given up on themselves yet. At this point in her career, she understands who she is and what people feel when they listen to her music, but she’s also figured out how to blossom within the confines of her creative paradigm. Wolfe's new album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She might be her most ambitious and versatile effort yet.
She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She contains ten songs and forty-minutes of Chelsea Wolfe's most expansive material yet. Never before she used electronic elements so unapologetically. Wolfe is mining inspiration from old school British trip hop acts like Portishead, which are a wonderful fit for her sound. She croons and whispers like Beth Gibbons on the opener Whispers in the Echo Chamber, to a fair balance of syncopated samples and crunching guitars, setting the tone for this new journey.
While her source of inspiration is clear, her songs keep a steady girth of industrial, doomy guitars that preserve that signature identity Chelsea Wolfe has crafted for herself over the years. The House of Self-Undoing is the most unique song on She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. It's a fast paced, drum-and-bass number where she navigates the mythical landscape created by the absence of a loved one. It won't be everybody's cup of tea, but it has this timeless, eerie feeling to it. It's breathless and dreamy at the same time.
Everything Turns Blue features these beautiful, elegiac strings and modified, echoing vocals that give the song this weird underwater feeling. It’s claustrophobic and heartbroken, with an awesomely melodramatic chorus. Tunnel Lights is more of an acquired taste with its disembodied piano and ghoulish chorus. I love song to feel genuinely unsettling, so I have a weak spot for it, but it's one of the least conventionally catchy songs on She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. But that chorus though. It slaps.
Next is one of my two favorite songs on the record The Liminal. It's one of the most Portishead-y too with its silky, muted vocals and ghastly melody. Chelsea sings on it about being caught between two worlds. It was the encore of her show in Montreal, ten days ago. The Liminal is ironically followed by Eyes Like Nightshade, my least favorite song on She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, it’s syncopated and aerial. It has an interesting haunted feeling, but I find there's too much electronics on it to work.
Salt is a Massive Attack-like ode to the necessity of tears in the grieving process that I felt was a little too straightforward and close to its inspiration in order to be memorable. Unseen World has these cool tribal drums that counterbalance the heavy use of keyboard that give the song a fun, spacey texture. Place in the Sun is an elegiac piano ballad that uses simplicity and minimalism in order to heighten its emotionality and make the most out of Chelsea's gorgeous, aerial vocal performance. Underrated track.
But yeah, can we talk about Dusk? Seriously, what a fucking banger. It’s one of Chelsea six or seven best songs for sure. The moody keyboards, the ghastly humming at the start, the droning guitar notes, the powerful lyrics about not giving up on someone you love even if this feeling is devouring you. Man, I felt that fucking song in my soul, the same way I felt 16 Psyche on Hiss Spun. Chelsea's still got it. She such a god tiered performer at expressing all-consuming passion and pain.
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She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She ranks up right up there with Hiss Spun as one of Chelsea Wolfe's best records. It's sad and haunted in the most beautiful way. There's no one in music that does anything even remotely similar to what she does, but I can't see how she can get one upped at this point. I don’t "love love” all the songs on this new record, but I would playlist like what? Six of them? Chelsea Wolfe's outdone herself. Her music's a very precise mood, but she can pry it out of you so effortlessly now.
