Chelsea Wolfe

Pain Is Beauty - Tracklisting
1. Feral Love
2. We Hit a Wall
3. House of Metal
4. The Warden
5. Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter
6. Sick
7. Kings
8. Reins
9. Ancestors, the Ancients
10. They’ll Clap When You’re Gone
11. The Waves Have Come
12. Lone

Chelsea Wolfe NY &  EU Dates
6/13 - Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw / Northside Music Fest w/ Swans
8/02 - Cork, Ireland @ Indiependent Music Fest
8/03 - Katowice, Poland @ OFF Festival

CHELSEA WOLFE PAIN IS BEAUTY TOUR 2013 
8/25 - Los Angeles, CA @ FYF Fest, LA History Park
9/01 - Tucson, AZ @ HOCO Festival
9/03 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom
9/04 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
9/06 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
9/07 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s
9/08 - New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
9/09 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
9/10 - Chapel Hill @ Local 506
9/11 - Washington DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel
9/13 - NYC, New York @ Bowery Ballroom
9/14 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
9/15 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
9/17 - Toronto, ONT @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
9/19 - Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room at Crofoot Ballroom
9/20 - Lexington, KY @ Boomslang Festival
9/21 - Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge
9/22 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
9/24 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
9/25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
9/27 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
9/28 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
9/30 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

Ticket info HERE

Chelsea Wolfe has already made quite an impression in her career to date. Her ability to combine old fashioned folk songwriting with elements of drone and psychedelia may not be as remarkably original as some will have you believe but the mixture is potent to say the least. With a band of four in tow, this date marks Wolfe’s first performance in Leeds and the main room of The Cockpit is fairly full to welcome her to West Yorkshire. The message, it seems, has spread.

Chelsea Wolfe initially emerges flanked by a violinist and a keyboard player, brandishing an acoustic guitar, and a voice that could halt any passer-by in their tracks. Despite the fact that the crowd are obviously expecting something louder the first few tracks are rapturously received and if anything it’s slightly disappointing when the violin and acoustic guitar departs to be replaced by two electric guitars and drums. Soon enough though the second half of the set proves equally arresting, despite the occasional moment when the aforementioned upstairs gig is audible at inappropriate moments.

Wolfe’s live band are far from showy, that much is true, but the added texture given to her songs by their involvement is what makes this an unforgettable performance. At times the reverberations of her voice and some simple finger-picking is enough to send the audience into hypnotic rapture but it is the dissonant, slightly krautrockian ending to the main set takes things to another level. Indeed, the power achieved by both sound incarnations, quiet and loud, is almost Swans-like in its graceful ferocity. Unmissable.

On May 6th, Chelsea Wolfe played a fantastic concert at the Trix in Antwerp. Before the concert, Phil Blackmarquis had the opportunity to meet Chelsea for an exclusive interview, done together with Michael Thiel, aka Weyrd Son, founder of Weyrd Son Records and a huge fan of the American singer/songwriter.
(Check the review of the concert here.)

PhB: Thank you very much for this interview. You are in the middle of your European Tour right now. How is it?
It’s been cool. It’s been different than usual because we’re doing a half acoustic, half electric set, so it’s been a little wierd sometimes to balance the energies of the two different sets. But it works out well.

PhB: Why did you decide to split the concerts in two sets?
We had the new(ish) acoustic album that had come out in October, so we incorporated a fair amount of it in the set but without doing an entire acoustic show, just to challenge the ‘old’ songs with something new… And we split the show in two sets…

PhB: In the US, I think it was only acoustic?
Yes, it was a suggestion from some of the venues that we’d do an acoustic and an electric set and it kind of worked out, so…

WS: Is your acoustic album, “Unknown Rooms” a sort of bridge for you between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Chelsea Wolfe, especially since you changed label?
I think so. My label had asked me if I wanted to do an acoustic album because I had so many old acoustic songs. People were asking me when I was going to release songs like ‘Flatlands’, which I had done years ago but hadn’t released yet. So, when the idea came up and I started compiling these old recordings, I decided to do some new ones as well. At the same time, I wanted to get away from the imagery of my former label, Pendu.

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Statuesque and striking, Chelsea Wolfe has only a violinist and keyboard player for company. She instantly captivates with an opening salvo of ethereal folk numbers from her current album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection Of Acoustic Songs. Her graceful voice both heals and devastates on the dark, haunting ‘Flatlands’ and ‘Boyfriend’.

She trades acoustic guitar for electric, returning with an axe-man and drummer for the second half of the performance, made up almost exclusively of tracks from 2011’s Apokalypsis LP. Huge walls of sound are slowly constructed, with elements of drone-metal, noise and blues drowning out Wolfe’s folkie timbre. The deafening climax of ‘Pale On Pale’ is drenched in reverb and enormous, swelling vocal loops. She’ll need a bigger venue next time.

CHELSEA WOLFE will play again in Cork, Ireland at the Indiependence Music & Arst Festival on August 2, 2013 on the Sargent House Stage.

It’s a miserable, grey evening in Dublin, but a gig at the Sugar Club is always somewhat of a transporting experience. While the light drizzle is altogether souring, there’s just something about the darkness and plush comfort of the Leeson St venue that easily shuts out such menial annoyances. With the right performer, it can become cocoon-like and suitably intense. Chelsea Wolfe, the ethereal Sacremento singer-songwriter with a lingering gothic sensibility, is such a performer, but until she comes on stage, Simon Bird will provide some blustering background listening.

Wolfe strides into view, wearing an ankle-length black skirt and a long-sleeved white top. She’s markedly slender and her face is largely covered by a mop of raven hair. With no drummer, she’s only accompanied by a violinist and a keyboardist/bassist. A small band will suffice for now as the set’s opening half takes solely from Wolfe’s 2012 album Unknown Rooms, a collection of acoustic songs that constitutes her most refined and affecting work to date.

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Chelsea Wolfe’s European headline tour begins this Wednesday April 24th in Dublin her first time playing in Ireland. For this tour she has brought along her Violin player and will be performing a combination of both acoustic and electric songs (new and old) for these very special shows.

SEE ALL SHOW DETAILS TICKET LINKS AND UPDATES HERE.

CHELSEA WOLFE EU 2013
Apr 24, 2013 - Dublin, Ireland @ The Sugar Club
Apr 25, 2013 - Belfast, N. Ireland @ Auntie Annie’s Porterhouse
Apr 27, 2013 - Praha, Czech Republic @ Lucerna Music Bar
Apr 28, 2013 - Berlin, Germany @ Kantine am Berghine
Apr 29, 2013 - København, Denmark  @ Vega
Apr 30, 2013 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Debaser Medis
May 02, 2013 - Oslo, Norway @ Bla
May 03, 2013 - Lund, Sweden @ Mejeriet
May 04, 2013 - Hamburg, Germany @ Uebel & Gefährlich
May 05, 2013 - Aachen, Germany @ Musikbunker Aachen
May 06, 2013 - Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix
May 07, 2013 - Paris, France @ Le Point Ephemere
May 08, 2013 - Diksmuide, Belgium @ 4AD
May 09, 2013 - London,UK @ Cargo
May 10, 2013 - Leeds, UK  @ The Cockpit
May 11, 2013 - Glasgow, UK @ King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
May 12, 2013 - Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute
May 13, 2013 - Utrecht, Netherlands @ Tivoli
May 14, 2013 - Arnhem, Netherlands @ Willemeen
May 16, 2013 - Zürich, Switzerland @ Bogen F
May 17, 2013 - Milan, Italy @ Lo Fi Club
May 18, 2013 - St Petersburg, Russia @ Skif Festival
May 19, 2013 - Moscow, Russia @ 16 Tons Club

The Work Magazine is honored to present one of our favorite artists, Chelsea Wolfe, as the debut highlight in our “Sound Check” series. Here we capture an intimate portrait of this great talent as she prepares to take the stage at The First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles.

VIDEO DIRECTED & SHOT BY: KRISTIN COFER 
EDITED BY: JON BROWN / STILL PHOTOS BY: EDDIE CHACON

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“Sargent House takes great care of their bands and is really supportive of art so I feel lucky to be a part of it.”

About to embark on a European Tour, with two dates in Ireland, Chelsea Wolfe is not the kind of sound one expects to associate with a label like Sargent House. Playing host to Irish acts like Adebisi Shank and And So I Watch You From Afar, among other considerably heavier sounding international artists.

Wolfe’s latest offering, the nine-song “Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs” is her clearest emergence from the veil and shadows that obscured her earlier work. As the album’s subtitle promises, it’s stark, but also in tune with her gothic sound; she’s accompanied by viola, violin, piano and analog synths. Her voice still conjures warped mirrors and molten candle wax, even when resounding in a room alone.

Describing it herself, Wolfe looks upon her own sound as bipolar or as having multiple personalities. “I don’t like to stick to one genre and I like to experiment. I’m interested in contrasting reality and something more arcane… Death is something that haunts me, as a character and concept, so the subject makes its way into a lot of my music.”

“Unknown Rooms” is a far cry from what we can expect from Chelsea Wolfe in the coming year when Wolfe will deliver her fourth album, which will expand upon the acoustic record’s themes. The new full-length will mark a significant change as Wolfe and Chisholm (who makes glitched goth-soul as Revelator) bring more electronic elements into the fold

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The photographs available of American singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe are hugely varied, but all seem to obscure her in some way. They’re akin to peering through a window into an unlit room, her pale face inconspicuous behind mourning veils, half-hidden beneath snakelike tendrils of black hair, or just blurry portraits of an arcane figure. Her sound is equally as nebulous and difficult to define. It’s folk, but with the pathos and epodic slant of a troubled soul. It would seem that Wolfe dwells rather a lot on death.

Following her debut album The Grime & The Glow and 2011 follow-up Apokalypsis, a particularly excellent performance at Roadburn festival gathered her fans from across various styles of metal. Black metal in particular feels like an obvious reference point, though admittedly that’s more to do with its misty and chilly atmospheres than its walls of caustic distorton. Wolfe’s supernatural songs are redolent of isolated pine forests, half-light percolating through tree canopies, and the malodor of rotten petiole. They suggest that death is just as lonely as we feared - yet their ghostly traces hint towards the way that our selves endure through the memories of others around us.

To coincide with the release of her Latitudes session Prayer For The Unborn, the Quietus spoke with Wolfe about haunted keyboards, photography and yes, mortality.

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We are happy to announce that Sargent House is releasing the Chelsea Wolfe / King Dude Split 7” as our special Record Store Day release on April 20, 2013. Support your local shop! 

Check out CW & KD singing together from their tour this past January below.

Chelsea Wolfe’s European headline tour is now announced in full. She will be combining her sets of acoustic and electric songs for these very special shows, she will also be playing Russia and Ireland for the first time. Before leaving California she will play at this year’s Desert Daze Festival out in Mecca, CA on April 20th. Upon her return to the States she will be flying in to New York for a special show with Swans for the Northside Music Festival on June 13th.

SEE ALL SHOW DETAILS AND UPDATES HERE.

Apr 20, 2013 - Mecca, CA @ Desert Daze Festival 

CHELSEA WOLFE EU 2013
Apr 24, 2013 - Dublin, Ireland @ The Sugar Club
Apr 25, 2013 - Belfast, N. Ireland @ Auntie Annie’s Porterhouse
Apr 27, 2013 - Praha, Czech Republic @ Lucerna Music Bar
Apr 28, 2013 - Berlin, Germany @ Kantine am Berghine
Apr 29, 2013 - København, Denmark  @ Vega
Apr 30, 2013 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Debaser Medis
May 02, 2013 - Oslo, Norway @ Bla
May 03, 2013 - Lund, Sweden @ Mejeriet
May 04, 2013 - Hamburg, Germany @ Uebel & Gefährlich
May 05, 2013 - Aachen, Germany @ Autonomes Zentrum
May 06, 2013 - Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix
May 07, 2013 - Paris, France @ Le Point Ephemere
May 08, 2013 - Diksmuide, Belgium @ 4AD
May 09, 2013 - London,UK @ Cargo
May 10, 2013 - Leeds, UK  @ The Cockpit
May 11, 2013 - Glasgow, UK @ King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
May 12, 2013 - Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute
May 13, 2013 - Utrecht, Netherlands @ Tivoli
May 14, 2013 - Arnhem, Netherlands @ Willemeen
May 16, 2013 - Zürich, Switzerland @ Bogen F
May 17, 2013 - Milan, Italy @ Lo Fi Club
May 18, 2013 - St Petersburg, Russia @ Skif Festival
May 19, 2013 - Moscow, Russia @ 16 Tons Club

Jun 13, 2013 - Brooklyn, NY@ Warsaw - Northside Music Festival w/ Swans

Here at NYLON TV, we love Chelsea Wolfe. Not only have we been listening to Unknown Rooms since it came out, we also admire her fashion abilities - this girl can pull of anything. (Including that amazing nose pincher she’s wearing in our video…) So, when she was in town to play her sold-out show at Music Hall of Williamsburg, we were on it. Come with us inside Black Gold, our favorite record store in Brooklyn, for a total shiver-inducing performance of Appalachia. Check out Black Gold here

Featured Music: Chelsea Wolfe - ‘Appalachia’ Also, check out the band crush we did with her a bit ago here.

What you have here below is 5:15 of visual & sonic ear candy. It’s Chelsea Wolfe & King Dude performing together in Toronto. On the real, I had to watch this footage on repeat because it’s that fucking good! The way this video is shot adds even more mood to these already very moody compositions. After the jump, check out this cryptic noir performance by Chelsea Wolfe & King Dude, plus a couple of surprises!

See More at CVLT Nation

Photo above by Daniel Ahrendt

Chelsea Wolfe visits the LA CANVAS Clubhouse to talk about her musical background, how dreams inspired her acoustic record, and the importance of looking back to your ancestors.

I had the pleasure of seeing Chelsea Wolfe last Friday night at the first Unitarian Church. Chelsea appeared on the stage like a ghost, an ethereal beauty with long dark hair & gentle movements. The church had an intense red glow to it & candles burned on what felt like every surface of the stage. No one cheered or spoke. It was completely silent—& then she started to play.

It felt like everyone held their breathe while she played & exploded into claps after each song, gasping for their next breath. Her shyness between songs made it feel like you were in a room with a friend, someone showing you a secret. 

When her set was complete, the crowd became alive, begging her for more. She returned to the stage, dark hair covering her eyes but a huge smile showing. She requested they turn down the lights—& it was perfect again as she closed the night with her beautiful & hauntingly dark mystical folk. Pick up her new acoustic album immediately.

— Jenelle Campbell

Not to be all LA and vain and superficial, but Chelsea Wolfe‘s complexion is like a cold glass of whole milk. And her voice — it sounds like how it feels to gulp down said beverage, or maybe a White Russian, on a sweltering summer day, inducing the kind of savage, glugging sounds that offend some types of people (not our kind of people), sitting cross-legged and bra-less on an abandoned rooftop in Detroit, wearing nothing but a virginal vintage slip dress, partially-laced combat boots, chipped red nail polish, and an armload of clinking bracelets stacked almost to the elbow. (I guess, although I’ve never been to Detroit.)

Standing in a fluorescent-lit corridor of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, it’s hard not to stare at Chelsea.  She is tall and pale and piercing, her jet black hair, feathery fur coat and generously-inked eyeliner are dark and elegant like a crow’s plumes; her shadowy silhouette broken only by a plastic cup containing a Barbie-pink cocktail that she holds in skull-ringed hands. Cramped between the main stage and “backstage,” which is more like a modest sitting area with nothing pretty to look at (present company excepted) and more often frequented by a totally different kind of worshipper, Chelsea and I talk death, John Cusack, Fashion Week,  and superstition.  She is on tour with her latest album Unknown Rooms: A Collection Of Acoustic Songs, and with moody vocals that instinctively oscillate between frozen and hearth-like, turning us to ice and then soothing our goosebumps, it is fair to say that on a rainy Friday evening in an unassuming Church in a no-good block of Los Angeles, Chelsea Wolfe is pretty much perfect. Even without the plastic bottle of vodka in my purse.

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