chelsea wolfe

Record #1013: Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (2024)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

Chelsea Wolfe has been a ubiquitous character in metal circles for a while now. She’s collaborated with artists like Converge, Deafheaven, Emma Ruth Rundle, and so many more. Her 2017 record Hiss Spun featured performances from Troy Van Leeuwen of QOTS and the one and only Aaron Turner of Isis, Old Man Gloom, and Sumac.

And if this is your point of reference to her catalog—as it was mine—her newest record, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out could come as quite a shock. While Wolfe’s delivery and songwriting are mostly familiar, the sonic palette is almost entirely electronic, replacing thick guitar riffs with bristling synths and aggressive drum machines a la Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails.

Continue reading →

Record #868: Bloodmoon – Bloodmoon: I (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Usually, when artists announce a collaboration, you can make a pretty educated guess as to what the end result might sound like. Take for instance Volcano Choir, the union of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and mathy post rockers Collections of Colonies of Bees, who released music that sounds like Bon Iver playing mathy post rock. Or May Our Chambers Are Full by Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle, which found ERR offering her gothic country vocals over Thou’s relentless sludge.

But then you have projects like Bloodmoon, which unites all of Converge with Chelsea Wolfe, her ubiquitous collaborator Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky. There isn’t much common ground between the chaotic mathcore, gothic doom, and melodic space metal of the three respective projects to predict what it might sound like.

There’s no low-hanging fruit so ripe that it’s practically picking itself off of the vine. Instead, this album is carefully and laboriously worked. It sounds cultivated, not gathered. And, every drop of sweat was worth it.

Continue reading →

2021: Best of the Year

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2021 was a spectacularly immense year for music. It felt like all of the bands who weren’t able to tour last year spent 2020 writing and recording new albums. Then this year, they released them.

With such a flood of new music, it’s worth noting that almost every year end list I’ve seen looks entirely different. Many publications that I could usually predict with decent accuracy (NPR, Pitchfork, etc) listed dozens of albums that I never even heard of. I listened to more music this year than ever before, but I’ve never been so aware of what I was missing. Many albums that I would have/should have liked were released to widespread acclaim (i.e., Quicksand, Every Time I Die, Low, Maybeshewill, Failure, the list goes on) and yet I watched them go by, my attention already stretched to its limits.

In any case, here are the records that really grabbed me this year.

Continue reading →

2018 Year End Lists

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

At midnight tonight, the earth will continue another circle around our star.

And while it might be a pretty arbitrary marker of time, it’s a great way to group music together to quantify it. And since I am an amateur music critic, I’m obligated to create my own year-end lists.

2018 was a banner year for music—not just because of the relentless onslaught of incredible new albums, but I also saw more shows than ever and discovered a fair amount of music that I missed. And in this article, I’m counting them all down. Continue reading →

Record #517: Chelsea Wolfe – Hiss Spun (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If I were to ask you to imagine a female singer-songwriter, there’s a good chance your mind would go to a subdued, pensive artist, a la Joan Baez or Julien Baker.

But lately, there’s been a crop of women whose particular brand of introspection is better accompanied by rattling, detuned guitars and a pummeling rhythm section than an acoustic guitar. Women like Kristina Esfandiari of King Woman and Chelsea Wolfe.

Continue reading →