Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss (Sargent House) 2015
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There’s always something intriguing and fascinating about Chelsea Wolfe. Maybe it’s because of her haunting and beautiful music that goes deep into our soul, maybe it’s because of her delicacy and honesty, or even maybe because of her unique and distinguished style. Many are the reasons to be intrigued and completely in love with this artist.
In 2013, Chelsea released the stunning Pain Is Beauty, which she approached more electronic elements and sounds on her songs, and the result was something quite remarkable. Unsurprisingly, her new album is another impressive effort. This time around, she went deep into her issues with sleeping, which is called sleep paralysis.
This album, Abyss, represents the intersection of the conscious and the unconscious and how that tend to affect Chelsea in her own life and music. It’s really sublime how she touches a theme so profound to her and convey it into intense and dreamy songs. Having John Congleton as producer, and as her band multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles), all songs are bound to each other with a loud-quiet-loud approach.
Abyss is probably Chelsea Wolfe’s heaviest, darkest and even the most personal record. Her songwriting skills and organic way to express the beauty and ugliness of life gets better every time she releases something new. It’s definitely a memorable and superb record.