There are many types of Chelsea Wolfe; the doom folk poet, the goth overlord, the master of all things hypnogogic. Wolfe’s covered a vast landscape of mystery and occultism over the past two decades, distorting genre lines into uniquely amorphous collections of songs. ‘The Dark’ is her newest and 9th of these. It’s not her loudest, heaviest or most rustic. It is however one of her boldest. With ‘The Dark’, Wolfe becomes the unashamed songwriter that her previous albums have always hinted towards. By minimising the historically all-consuming components of her music – like the layers of distortion on ‘Abyss’ and the lo-fi scuzz of ‘The Grime and the Glow’ – Wolfe’s voice sounds bullishly stark. ‘The Dark’ is thus the closest there’s ever been to Wolfe the singer-songwriter. It’s also a high watermark for Wolfe the storyteller.
The Californian has described the album as a love letter to the dark. This may sound grim but it’s strangely charming too. Yes, the darkness can be a metaphor for the emotional nadirs of life, but it is also where resilience lies. This is best explained by Wolfe herself via the title track’s gentle defiance. Keen to imbue the darkness with a sense of renaissance, Wolf has developed a newfound positivity. “Seeds grow in the darkness/our love glows in the darkness”, she sings. It’s a striking viewpoint – newfound fortitude is obtained only when at our weakest. Wolfe’s vocals support this further, with her sounding both weathered and imperious.
Her voice is a focal point throughout ‘The Dark’. In near-conversational speak, opener ‘Cold’ has Wolfe conversing with someone (or something) that she fears, but from whose grasp she escapes. She’s not running away though, but rather “running back home” in an endeavour to discover “who I am without you”. The subject of Wolfe’s address is ambiguous but never impersonal. Rather, it’s surprisingly relatable, making ‘Cold’ one of Wolfe’s most accessible songs to date.
This goes for the rest of ‘The Dark’ too. While lacking the spooky crunch of Wolfe’s most revered albums, ‘The Dark’ may become a future entry point for the unconverted.
There nonetheless remains enough of an eerie allure to keep Wolfe loosely tethered to her musical roots. ‘Turn the Key’ opens with grandly strummed guitars, sounding like the strings are hanging by a thread, as if precariously perched upon the instrument. Wolfe’s tendency towards the ghostly is also present, evidenced through her Kate Bush-esque head voice that anchors the chorus to ‘Seethe’ with a crisp breathiness. The song’s final moments dissolve structure, making way instead for atmosphere. While emotionally warm, much of the album feels instrumentally cold as a result of this penchant for ambience, as gales of sound amplify the music’s intensity.
‘The Dark’ is Wolfe at her most accessible but she remains capricious. ‘Death Is Not the End’ is a tale of two Wolfe’s. The acoustic whisperer conducts the first half before the distorted warrior battles through the second, the yin and the yang of Wolfe’s musical palette. The muscular grandeur of the song is potent. It also carries an inherent finality. So much so that when ‘Dancer in the Sky’ follows – with its watery pianos and icicles of pizzicato strings – it feels less of a finale and more the end credits. Its group-sung chorus instils the song with something of a Broadway feel too. The result is less of a sprint and more of a stumble to the finish line, but Wolfes make it out of ‘The Dark’ in anthemic style all the same.
The album is nonetheless Wolfe, yet again at her most conceptually consummate. Her paean to the darkness is captivating, but it’s the enchantment of Wolfe herself that ensures an ember of light has us drifting through ‘The Dark’.
BEN WILLIAMS