Where the sparse arrangements of her 2012 acoustic album, Unknown Rooms, spotlighted the incremental fluctuations of her voice, Chelsea Wolfe‘s Pain Is Beauty feels like a more wide-angled affair, folding her soprano into swaths of strings and pulsating synths until the result feels as a vast and intimidating as the wild expanses of land and water she’s singing about. Wolfe has called the album her “love-letter to nature,” and while the switch to a more electronic palette would seem to contradict this mission statement, the repetitive, melodically cyclical chorus on “The Waves Have Come” grows with the awe-inspiring momentum of a real-life tornado. Fittingly, there’s a trace of the literary notion of the sublime (or the co-existence of of terror and ecstasy) in the scenario she describes in the song: When earth cracks open and swallows then we’ll never be tired again, and we’ll be given everything the moment we realize we’re not in control. Pain is Beauty Out September 3 via Sargent House.
SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE SHOW DETAILS HERE
CHELSEA WOLFE
8/25 - Los Angeles, CA @ FYF Fest, LA History Park
9/01 - Tucson, AZ @ HOCO Festival at Hotel Congress
CHELSEA WOLFE & TRUE WIDOW
9/03 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom
9/04 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
9/06 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
9/07 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s
9/08 - New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
9/09 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
9/10 - Chapel Hill @ Local 506
9/11 - Washington DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel
9/13 - NYC, New York @ Bowery Ballroom
9/14 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
9/15 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
9/17 - Toronto, ONT @ Horseshoe Tavern (NO True Widow)
9/19 - Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room at Crofoot Ballroom
9/20 - Lexington, KY @ Boomslang Festival
9/21 - Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge
9/22 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
9/24 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
9/25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
9/26 - Boise, ID @ The Shredder
9/27 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
9/28 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
9/30 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall