Goth rock and electronica make for a delicious pairing. From HEALTH to Nine Inch Nails to Depeche Mode; dark and gloomy music can reach new highs of carnal intensity when coated with muscular synths and pounding drum machines. The gothic aesthetic is enamoured with doomed romance and moody sensuality, which makes the pulsating, seductive and often downright-erotic tonal palette of heavy electronic music a natural fit for musicians that err towards the dark side.
It was only a matter of time before Chelsea Wolfe submerged herself into this milieu. Across the last decade, the California musician has established herself as something of a cult goth icon. Her mercurial solo oeuvre touches on neofolk, blues and doom, while a brilliant 2021 collaboration album with Converge dealt in resplendent alt metal. Following contributions to the soundtrack of 2022 horror film X, she’s returned another solo full-length; the electronica-infused ‘She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She’.
—
—
The intensely-physical bass of opener ‘Whispers In The Echo Chamber’ is an immediate declaration of this stylistic shift. It’s a brutal track, climaxing with a passage of Author & Punisher-style industrial metal. The rest of the album is more patient in its approach, however this bold, visceral opening track functions as Wolfe’s announcement that ‘She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She’ is no reserved exercise in neo-folk.
Wolfe, along with long-term collaborator Ben Chisholm and producer Dave Sitek (TV On The Radio) have constructed and then deconstructed these songs with masterful attention to detail. The shift towards electronica reaps endless rewards, ranging from the hard-edged opener to the unpredictable IDM of ‘Eyes Like Nightshade’ to ‘The Liminal’ and ‘Salt’ which are basically trip-hop; all shadowy drum beats and steadily-controlled emotions that build to explosive finishes.
Throughout the genre-bending (and transcending), Wolfe’s persona holds it all together. The album’s internal language of liminality, underworlds and escape is consistently engrossing, full of gorgeous quasi-narratives like ‘House Of Self-Undoing’s hero’s journey and the eternal lovers of beautiful closer ‘Dusk’. Her elegant, pared-down poetry is matched by her versatile voice which, as evidenced on album highlight ‘Everything Turns To Blue’, rarely has to ascend beyond a controlled hush to enrapture and devastate.
While it’d be difficult to proclaim it her finest work, ‘She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She’ is certainly Wolfe’s most ambitious and careful-constructed album. Deliciously-dramatic in its nocturnal flair, it cracks open a whole new set of tantalising sonic possibilities for Wolfe’s and her collaborators’ future.
8/10
Words: Tom Morgan
—
