For more than a decade, the American Chelsea Wolfe has ploughed a singular furrow, at the edge of spectral folk, doom and gothic music. Her voice, at once ethereal and menacing, has made her one of the most fascinating figures of the alternative scene. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She marks a turning point: that of an artist who, emerging from a long work on herself, makes healing the material of her art.
The critics (an 82 average across eleven reviews) hail a work of rebirth, more electronic and more luminous than its predecessors. They praise the audacity of a trip-hop and industrial production that renews the singer’s language, as well as the depth of an introspective subject devoted to inner transformation.
Musically, the record partly abandons the heaviness of doom to embrace programmed textures, syncopated beats, glacial synthetic sheets. Chelsea Wolfe’s voice, always at the centre, floats like an incantation, now vulnerable, now sovereign. This is a music of the in-between, of the threshold, where the gothic darkness is tinged with a new clarity.
This electronic turn will divide: early devotees, attached to the heaviness of the guitars, may regret this distancing from metal, and certain experiments still seem to be seeking their balance. The moult is not quite complete. But the audacity deserves to be saluted.
Verdict: 8/10. A courageous, personal record that sees Chelsea Wolfe moult without disowning herself. A rebirth in half-tones, but full of promise.
