“I’d been looking for a way out a long time.”
Chelsea Wolfe tends to reinvent herself with each album. The latest, a collaboration with metalcore legends Converge, departed significantly from the dark folk of Birth of Violence from 2019. Newly sober and reaching 40, Wolfe embarks in another new direction, this time with a new label in tow. She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She immediately implies a non-linear narrative, which we get from the start.
Whispers in the echo chamber of my mind,
In the void they come alive and intertwine,
In the void I saw all I ever wanted,
Beyond reality, beyond the binary.
The new sound crackles to life in seconds with the intro “Whispers In The Echo Chamber”. Aptly titled, Wolfe‘s soft vocals sit atop a bassy electronic beat. She sounds nearly disconnected from the backdrop, pounding on a flat line while the synths rise and fall. This tendency quickly becomes a motif for the album, both sonically and thematically: Wolfe remains as instrumentals come and go.
The mood, similarly, pulsates – “House Of Self-Undoing”, for instance, features a lead synth early on that I swear I’ve heard from a Flaming Lips deep cut. “Everything Turns Blue” on the other hand would not feel out place as an allegory of the cave-like soundtrack. All the while, these undulations feel aesthetically consistent within the album’s narrative and don’t stray too far from the nest. The main structure remains dark, electronic-based, and moody.
A pull too strong,
don’t try to forfeit.
The way is through,
On tunnel lights.
Fourth track “Tunnel Lights” begins with more of a trip-hop bend to it, building on the gothic darkwave that defines the album thus far. Still, her voice rises just beyond the backing piano and electronic pulses that punctuate this song. As the layers build, fall away, and return again for the climax, this sound already feels iconic in its own way, which speaks to the simplicity and archetypal nature of some of this material.
Down the stretch, Wolfe continues to deliver great vocal performances, especially on tracks like “Eyes Like Nightshade” and arguably most notably “Place In The Sun”. The latter contains some of the sparsest instrumentation across the album, placing her alone in a dark room. Moreso than any other track, the backing builds around this foundation, swirling and stuttering glitchy patterns climbing above ground.
In these confines,
True love’s shadow still awaits,
Cracked and fractured,
Held anew and whole again.
Closer “Dusk” sounds the most instantly familiar, despite existing within its own space in the context of the album. Thematically, it’s the most optimistic number, and features arguably the most cathartic build, with a rising guitar lick to nearly bury the refrain “don’t give me up, don’t let me go”.
Much of She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She sounds like you should have heard it before. Not to say that anything here rehashes other material, but instead because so much does sound familiar. This quality of the album speaks to the constitution of these compositions in that they’re instantly memorable. After one listen, they stay as earworms and as building blocks for the larger picture. If any criticism can be mustered up, it’s that there are few standouts here, which is true. Instead, each track stands as an integral piece of the album at large.
8.5/10
She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She comes out this Friday, February 9 on Loma Vista with pre-orders here.