Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Qobuz new release review (February 2024)
Chelsea Wolfe’s seventh album — and most circularly titled yet — is her first since 2019’s folk-focused Birth of Violence and marks the longest gap between albums so far in her career (her first six were released over a span of nine years). While one might presume that such an interregnum was the result of a paucity of ideas, instead, She Reaches finds Wolfe and her band firing on all cylinders, indulging in a more electronic (and notably less folk-indebted) approach to their doom-pop. Apparently, the songs were written in traditional band style, then “deconstructed” with the assistance of producer Dave Sitek into their final versions, making for a dense and complex melange of thudding guitars and evocative electronic treatments that render this material far more cinematically gloomy than anything Wolfe has released to this point. There are also notable nods toward “accessibility”; “House of Self-Undoing,” with its high-intensity rhythms and rockist construction, is probably as close to a hooky, windows-down anthem as Wolfe will ever get (though, of course, it does break down into an introspective, gothic section before the final climax), and the glitchy electronica of “Salt” is deceptively soothing, evoking nothing less than a trip-hop number made by a club kid’s goth cousin. While there are only 10 tracks here, She Reaches is still a remarkably diverse album, as dense and complex as it is dynamic. Wolfe’s typical approach — vulnerable but wrathful, focused but overwhelming — is in top form, as evidenced by the fact that the album is bookended by its first two singles: “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” opens the album with a jittery, immersive pummeling; “Dusk” wraps the set with richly textured and complex doom-saying. While she has lost much of the folk influences of her earlier work and homed in on the electronic flourishes and metallic aggression that’s more aligned with her dramatic approach, Wolfe is also quite capable of quieter moments that are just as impactful. “Tunnel Lights” is a prime example; a perfectly named track, it’s a relatively slow-burning number that flickers with ominous energy. It’s all unknown peril, disoriented suffering, and echo-ey drama, and is so cinematic, it will almost certainly show up in a pivotal scene in some future urban apocalypse drama.
