“She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She” is Chelsea Wolfe’s first solo album since her excellent 2019 LP “Birth of Violence”, and it’s at once a return to form and a venture towards something entirely new. The album’s title reflects its central theme: a conversation between past, present, and future selves, exploring rebirth and personal transformation.
Chelsea Wolfe has been a scene staple of all forms of gothic music for nearly two decades now, but her latest head-turn of an album “She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She” is as serpentine as its mantra-like title. Coming off her work with composer Tyler Bates for the original score to the 2022 Ti West slasher X and a collaborative LP with metalcore legends Converge, Wolfe continues to evolve from her early neo-folk days in the mid-2000s into heavier industrial and darkwave sounds after 2015’s “Abyss“, 2017’s “Hiss Spun“, and 2019’s “Birth of Violence“. As her recent music started to climb into the Billboard charts for the first time in her career, Wolfe kept the alluring and suffocating atmosphere as taut as the thrilling horror films she’s come to score.
The allure of “She Reaches Out” is in how it captures our liminal moments where we wrestle with self-reflection and self-evolution after pivotal life events. Wolfe depicts all 10 dark tales with a shapeshifting beauty and menace. Opener “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” starts with lyrics about rebuilding yourself through pain as Wolfe’s vocals rotate in a vortex created by producer Dave Sitek’s modular wall: “Bathing in the blood of who I used to be,” she sings.
The shadowplay continues with “The Liminal” and “Eyes Like Nightshade,” the latter paying tribute to Wolfe’s favourite scene from Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire in which two lovers try hallucinogenic flying ointment and end up with belladonna eyes. Likewise, Wolfe’s eyes continue dilating as she reaches out further into the world of moonlit music.
The Fat Angel Sings 