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…I’d seen Chelsea Wolfe walking around the club beforehand. She was wearing a black (what I believe to be) monkey fur coat. It was enormous making her hard to miss. She stuck out like some rare bird on exhibit at a millionaire’s party at the beginning of the industrial revolution. When I looked at her, her eyes and head turned down in the fashion of someone who spent a childhood being tormented by far less special creatures.

On stage she arranged some items, most of which were obscured by the greasy black hair of a goth in front of me, but I think I saw the skull of an Ibex. A waifish male uncovered a keyboard from under a heavy black sheet; a miniscule violinist prepared herself. The crowd murmured its drunken excitement.

Before that night I don’t think I ever heard a woman properly sing.

She looked like a witch in a Hammer horror film and sang like an angel. Her voice cut through the air and into the soul of every person there. It was colder than the night and bit twice as hard. 

Her manner is effortless, that voice needs no provocation. I find myself wishing Chelsea and I were friends so that when I was feeling the world was just a great big ball of shit I could call her up and have her sing to me and remind me something’s out there are beautiful.

If I had to complain, the set just wasn’t long enough.

See Full Review at VICE

When it came out last year, “Flatlands” saw the notoriously macabre Chelsea Wolfe literally bowing down before the altar of less is more, lyrically expressing her desire for the simpler things in life (a stretch of landscape, the feeling of being held tight by another person) against a barren backdrop of acoustic guitar and swollen strings. It was one of the most affecting songs from the LA songwriters’ Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, and it spoke to her ability to be really creepy with little more than her voice and her words. With his palette of wonky synths and terse rhythmics, Lust For Youth blunts a good deal of that lyrical impact, but Wolfe’s melody reveals itself to be surprisingly dance-floor appropriate. Grab a copy of Unknown Rooms via Sargent House, and check out Lust For Youth’s recent Growing Seeds LP on Sacred Bones.

Stream: Chelsea Wolfe, “Flatlands (Lust For Youth Remix)”


Stream: Chelsea Wolfe, “Flatlands” Original Track

For the fourth night of Tomorrow Never Knows 2013, Schubas hosted an evening of acoustic and jam-rock heaviness with first openers Sabers, followed by King Dude, The Amazing, and headliner Chelsea Wolfe…

…As midnight approached, headliner Chelsea Wolfe and bandmates Ben Chisholm (synth) and Andrea Calderon (violin) launched into their acoustic performance. Wolfe apologized early in her set, saying she was sick and that her voice “has a mind of its own.” Despite her apology and use of a throat spray between songs, Wolfe was spot-on with excellent clarity. The trio performed stripped down versions of tracks from The Grime and The Glow and Apokalypsis, as well as numbers from her latest, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs. Their headlining set was intimate and incredibly captivating. Wolfe returned to the stage alone for an encore, and played a cover of Sibylle Baier’s “The End.”
SEE FULL STORY, VIDEOS & PHOTOS AT BVCHICAGO

Chelsea Wolfe’s music may be dark, but don’t call it diabolical – though some take it as such.

Those spooked listeners might point to Exhibit A: the striking cover of her last long-player, 2011’s “Apokalypsis,” with its portrait of a young artist as an otherworldly creature with whited-out eyes. Yet that eerie image was simply misunderstood, explains the laconic Sacramento-born, L.A.-based singer-songwriter.

“That wasn’t intended to be scary,” Wolfe, 28, says matter-of-factly. “It was supposed to represent being enlightened, but people took it as demonic.”

Undeterred, those same rattled observers might trot out Exhibit B: songs like “Sunstorm,” the closing track of her most recent album, “Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs”: “It was a Thursday/ I ran right over/ You were laying there/ Twisted at the knees,” she sings, bouncing plaintive call-and-response vocals off a chugging piano and celestial synth and replicating the pull of a memory – or the eternal recurrence of a haunting.

That song is about hearing someone’s last words and the responsibility that comes with that,” Wolfe says. “My interpretations of things are always a little strange and skewed – I was originally inspired to write it when a good friend got in a bad accident and was near death and pulled through, and I imagined what it would be like if he died.”

So if Wolfe’s songs frighten gentle listeners, then perhaps it’s because they share something with their maker.

“A lot of my songs deal with death because it’s not something I’ve experienced much in life, and I’m a little scared of it, I think,” says Wolfe, whose father played in a country band when she was growing up. “So I explore it in music and songs. It’s my way of understanding it, I guess.”

Death and darkness lapping at the edge of town, at the borders of civilized life, saturate “Unknown Rooms,” a gathering of old and new numbers ornamented with minimal yet lyrical arrangements. Death seeps into the opener, “Flatlands,” a twanging ode to simplicity and antimaterialism; rises to the fore in the fragile fragment “I Died With You,” a whisper to a loved one; and lies in wait during the swaying, sonorous “Appalachia” which evokes a place and its denizens.

“The Appalachian people and history have always inspired me,” she says now of the latter track. “It’s really intriguing, that separation from the rest of society, and I found out last year that my grandmother had been missing for a long time and that she moved to the Ozarks – I was thinking about it.”

“Appalachia” was one of a handful of songs that Wolfe wrote for “Unknown Rooms,” which spun off a thought by Cathy Pellow, owner of Wolfe’s current label, Sargent House. Pellow mentioned that many of her favorite Wolfe songs were unreleased, floating around on YouTube or simply performed live. So the songwriter recorded more than 20 of those tunes from the past five or six years along with simpatico new ones.

“I chose ones,” she says, “that could live together on this home of an album.”

The next challenge will be replicating that stark mood live with her current tour of acoustic shows, accompanied by Ben Chisholm on analog synths, piano and bass and violinist Andrea Calderon.

“It’ll be so much more intimate than my usual live show,” she says with a jot of trepidation. “Half of the set is just me out there, so I’m a little challenged by it.”

With King Dude. 9 p.m. Friday. $15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St., S.F. (415) 885-0750. www.slimspresents.com.

One of my favorite singer-songwriters, the beguiling Chelsea Wolfe tours this winter in support of her Sargent House release Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs. I play this repeatedly. I can’t get enough of her dramatic, haunting vocals and lush arrangements. Honest, heartbreaking, gorgeous, dark, lovely. And live, Chelsea Wolfe mesmerized the crowd with her aura and talent. Now living in Los Angeles, Wolfe grew up in Northern California.

Amy Steele: Your father played country music. How did that influence you?

Chelsea Wolfe: He had a home studio that I’d sneak into and record songs I’d written. Being around music and seeing him go to shows was of course what introduced me to the world of music, even though I wasn’t very involved back then.

Amy Steele: When did you start singing?

Chelsea Wolfe: When I was seven or eight years old.

Amy Steele: What type of musical training have you had?

Chelsea Wolfe: I’ve taken classes here and there but usually dropped out before they finished. I love learning but I’m not very good with institutions.

Amy Steele: Have you been in bands before?

Chelsea Wolfe: I’ve messed around with some rock bands but always ended up doing my own thing.

Amy Steele: What do you like about being a solo artist?

Chelsea Wolfe: I like it because there is a freedom to play alone or play with a group of musicians. And I’m really lucky to play and write with some brilliant people.

Amy Steele: Your music is beautifully dark and mysterious. Are you a dark person?

Chelsea Wolfe: Thank you. I can be. Sometimes I get on autopilot and just focus on the work, but then there will be a lull and I sort of stop and breathe and look around and sometimes it can get dark.

Amy Steele: What inspires your songs?

Chelsea Wolfe: The world around me and the world at large.. news stories, films, literature. A mix of reality and mystical or mythical elements. Love, life and death.

Amy Steele: When I saw you perform this past year at the Middle East in Cambridge, Mass. you captivated the audience and truly engulfed everyone in your music. What do you like about performing? How do you transform your music into a live performance?

Chelsea Wolfe: Performing is a challenge for me; writing and recording is a much more natural state for me. But I like the challenge of performing the songs live and I’ve come to enjoy the energies of the audience and meeting the people who come to my shows.

Amy Steele: What’s the greatest challenge about being a women in the music business?

Chelsea Wolfe: I think because I present my music in an androgynous way I don’t have like, problems or challenges because I’m a woman. The one thing I’d say is that I get compared to other female artists that I have nothing to do with because critics love to group us all together, but my influences are mostly male artists actually. Not a big deal though.

Amy Steele: Why did you want to do this acoustic album?

Chelsea Wolfe: I started working with Sargent House earlier this year and they suggested I release an album of all my orphaned acoustic songs that I would play live or demo but had never actually released on an album. I was excited about the idea and as I gathered the old recordings I decided to re-approach most of them with new instrumentation and also wrote and recorded some new acoustic/folk songs for the record.

Amy Steele: What can fans expect on this winter tour?

Chelsea Wolfe: A much more intimate experience.. It’s going to be pretty stripped down, to guitar, vocals, synth and violin. Sometimes I get a little nervous about how personal it will be, but I’m also looking forward to experiencing it myself and pushing myself to do something I’m not completely comfortable with.

CHELSEA WOLFE ACOUSTIC TOUR 2013
1/11 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall !
1/13 Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge ! & w/ Case Studies
1/14 Seattle, WA – The Triple Door ! & w/ Case Studies
1/15 Vancouver, BC – The Media Club ! & w/ Case Studies
1/18 Minneapolis, MN – Triple Rock Social Club !
1/19 Chicago, IL – Schubas Tavern !
1/20 Pontiac, MI – The Pike Room at Crofoot Ballroom !
1/21 Toronto, ON – The Drake Hotel !
1/22 Montreal, QC – Il Motore !
11/23 Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair !
1/25 Philadelphia, PA – Side Chapel First Unitarian Church ! SOLD OUT
1/25 Philadelphia, PA – Side Chapel First Unitarian Church ! 2nd Show added
1/26 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ! & w/ Starred
1/28 Washington, DC – The Rock & Roll Hotel w/ Starred
1/29 Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506
1/30 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
1/31 Baton Rouge, LA – Spanish Moon
2/01 Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s w/ Sarah Jaffe
2/02 Austin, TX – Central Presbytrian Church
2/03 Dallas, TX – House of Blues – Cambridge Room
2/05 Phoenix, AZ – The Crescent Ballroom w/ Sarah Jaffe
2/06 San Diego, CA – The Loft At UCSD w/ Sarah Jaffe
2/08 – Los Angeles, CA – First Unitarian Church w/ Deradoorian & Sarah Jaffe

! = w/ King Dude

Click above to go to the full Chelsea Wolfe interview and photo slide show at Refinery 29. Story by Nathan Reese all photos by Mike Rosenthal.

”..Starting her set with the ghostly “Movie Screen”, Chelsea Wolfe’s sound quickly had the room encompassed in gentle but uneasy layers of sonics. Her band, consisting of two guitars, drums and keys, continue and build upon this sound and energy over the next few tracks; as they progress, one is continually struck by the range of Wolfe’s voice, as she seamlessly weaves octave upon octave of harmonies through her songs.

Soon, the keyboard is dropped in favour of bass guitar, and the group pound through the faster and more aggressive tracks from 2011’s Apokalypsis, a few yet-to-be-recorded songs, and some choice numbers from the group’s debut The Grime and The Glow.

These quicker songs are performed with a hefty punch not present on the band’s recordings, and the heightened dynamics both suit the songs and provide a welcome change of pace to the rest of the tunes.

A great strength of Chelsea Wolfe’s set of songs is that whilst each has its own charm and distinguishing features, they all fit within the same aesthetic; the tracks bleed into each other and there is no break in the dark mood cultivated by the group.

Highlights of the set include the gentle, slowly building “Halfsleeper”, “Tracks (Tall Bodies)”, while “Pale On Pale” had the whole audience in a hypnotic, rhythmic sway.

Returning to the stage to perform crowd favourite “Mer” as an encore, it is clear that the group made a serious impression on the Northcote crowd. When so many artists are unable to create the same aura of their recorded material in this era of relentless multi-tracking, Chelsea Wolfe are one band who do nothing but enforce their presence with a faultless live show. ” Reviewed by A.P. Morton

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