For Chelsea Wolfe, darkness has never been something that simply means fear.
Across two decades of music, Chelsea Wolfe has made a home inside it, moving between doom, folk, industrial noise and ghostly electronics without ever sanding down the unease at the centre of her work.
On ninth album ‘The Dark’, released today via Loma Vista Recordings, Wolfe wanted to find something else lurking in there.
‘I just really wanted to marry this sense of like fun, whimsical, playfulness with all of this like darkness,’ Wolfe tells us.
The phrase sitting at the top of her notes throughout the process was ‘dark whimsy’.
‘I don’t know when I think about the dark it’s not just like something scary. It’s a beautiful night sky, like glittering with stars. Like the dark just creates space for beauty and and magic to come in through.’
That tension runs throughout ‘The Dark’. It is heavy without constantly relying on brute force, deeply personal without becoming claustrophobic, and more direct than Wolfe has traditionally allowed herself to be.
Getting there meant deliberately dismantling some of her usual creative habits.
Chelsea Wolfe ‘Cold’ video
Chelsea Wolfe needed a reset
The starting point was ‘Cold’ (above).
Wolfe entered the album wanting to strip songwriting back to its foundations before worrying about the layers that would eventually surround it.
‘I was just like, I want the basics of alternative rock music. I want piano, guitar, drums. Like, I want to like keep things to these basics when we’re writing, and then think about production and what we’re going to add later.’
More significantly, ‘The Dark’ marked the first time Wolfe worked with songwriter and producer Jennifer Decilveo as a writing collaborator, alongside longtime creative partner Ben Chisholm.
Decilveo encouraged Wolfe to begin songs by looking directly at whatever she was dealing with in that moment.
‘I wrote this during a period of time in my life when I was realizing that there was a lot of things that I needed to let go of, which is not such an easy thing to do.’
Those things included relationships, circumstances and parts of Wolfe herself that no longer belonged to the person she was becoming.
‘This process of having to let go of people, of things, the aspects of myself as I grow older as a woman, and so yeah, just channeling that into the music.’
That immediacy was unfamiliar territory.
Chelsea Wolfe ‘The Dark’ visual
Wolfe has never struggled to make intensely personal music, but working with Decilveo changed the route she took to reach it. Instead of circling an emotion through symbolism first, there were moments where she simply stared straight at what had happened yesterday and wrote from there.
‘I just felt like I needed like a reset, something about this record, something about where I’m at in my life, and I was like, I you know I don’t know if yeah I just I just wanted to get out of my comfort zone.’
Decilveo pushed further, encouraging Wolfe towards bigger choruses and vocal melodies that sometimes sat outside her normal range.
Annie Lennox became one unexpected reference point.
‘I mean some of my influences are you know someone like Annie Lennox or something like I was listening to her during writing this and you know her her music can be very dark you know. Song like, you know, a lyric like “Walking on Broken Glass. Like that’s a very dark image, but at the same time, the song feels very like playful and and magical.’
It is an interesting doorway into ‘The Dark’. Wolfe hasn’t suddenly made a pop record, but there is a willingness here to let melody breathe rather than bury every beautiful thing underneath another layer of fog.
Why we’re drawn to darkness
The album’s title comes loaded with the kind of imagery Wolfe has inhabited throughout her career, but this time she sees darkness less as something threatening and more as somewhere people can retreat to when reality becomes unbearable.
‘I think that you know life is really hard for many people for many different reasons, and I think that diving into a more fantastical mythical world, again, whether it’s music or books or film, helps us to process and deal and be able to withstand all of the horrors and banalities of everyday life.’
Then comes the line that might explain the record better than anything else.
‘I feel like the dark is like it’s it’s almost romantic, you know.’
For Wolfe, it is mysterious, mystical and capable of opening a door into another world.
‘Calling this record “The Dark” and having the song called “The Dark, it was really kind of like my love letter to all of that.’
Asked to imagine the album as a physical place, Wolfe initially returns to that glittering night sky before landing somewhere even more fitting: the gothic photography of Nona Limmen and the image of a castle suspended among thunderous clouds.
‘I think about that maybe like a dark dark castle in the sky. You know, sounds fun to me.’
There is the ‘dark whimsy’ again.
Chelsea Wolfe ‘Death is Not the End’ visual
Letting go without losing yourself
Beneath the imagery, ‘The Dark’ is fundamentally a record about release.
Wolfe hopes people can use these songs to find enough courage to recognise whatever has stopped serving them, even when cutting it loose hurts.
‘I hope that it empowers others to be brave enough to let go of what is harming them or holding them back from being their truest self. It’s a challenging thing to do, and at the same time, it can be very freeing.’
The album’s expanded cast helps carry that process. Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails, Matt Chamberlain, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa and Justin Meldal-Johnsen all contribute across its ten tracks.
There was no elaborate calculation behind those names.
‘It’s really just kind of like a dream list of musicians that I admire.’
Mozgawa’s drumming felt particularly suited to ‘Halo’ and ‘I’m Not There’, while Wolfe heard something in Finck that belonged inside one of the album’s most emotionally bruising moments.
‘Robin Fink playing on a song like “Humors, which is like one of the most sort of deeply like emotionally heavy songs. Yeah, he’s just got such like a powerful energy, and he’s such an amazing player that I felt like he lent so much to that song.’
Chelsea Wolfe ‘Seethe’ visual
Australia is part of the plan
With ‘The Dark’ now out in the world, attention inevitably shifts towards where Wolfe takes it next.
Australian fans have reason to be optimistic.
‘I mean that’s the plan. I don’t have dates on the books right now, but you know we’re we’re definitely booking out next year and trying to go everywhere we possibly can. So I’m sure we’ll be back next year. Yeah.’
Nothing is locked in yet, but a potential 2027 Australian return would give these songs the chance to stretch into the immersive live environment Wolfe has spent years perfecting.
Away from that machinery, her actual life has become considerably quieter.
Wolfe now lives in a small Northern California town, tucked away in the woods when she isn’t touring or working in Los Angeles.
‘I really like a quiet, simple life out here in the woods, and I’m like, I’m definitely a true hermit. This is like what I envisioned when I was a kid. I was like, I want to live in a cabin in the woods by a stream.’
Somehow, the artist who has spent her career building forests, shadows and strange other worlds through music ended up living among the trees for real.
It feels appropriate.
‘The Dark’ isn’t Wolfe running away from what frightens her. It is an album about walking directly towards it, finding out what needs to be left behind and discovering that darkness can hold more than fear.
Sometimes there are stars in there too.
Chelsea Wolfe ‘The Dark’ tracklist
- Cold
- Seethe
- Humours
- Swallower
- Halo
- The Dark
- Turn the Key
- I’m Not There
- Death Is Not The End
- Dancer in the Sky
‘The Dark’ is out now digitally via Loma Vista Recordings, with physical editions arriving September 18th.
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