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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