Koko, Camden
“Undone, cut the cords, cut ties to yours.”
Following the acclaimed release of her recent LP, the insular singer-songwriter descends upon a hushed crowd, rendered to perceptible silence; laying witness to gothic rock, doom metal and modern folk unfoldings with inspiring prowess.
These initial words prove prescient to tonight’s unfurling held at this historic venue in North London; one momentarily gripped by a latent dramatism and romantic escapism. Dissonant, jangling keys invite us in closer, greeted by Wolfe’s ghostly-white figure, hands cupped desperately against her mouth, whilst the booming drums set ablaze a delicate defiance, tinged by a likeness to Trent Reznor’s industrial-inflicted outfit, Nine Inch Nails.
Venturing further into this darkened, gothic world, Wolfe’s excavation of her emotional turmoil proves enticing within ‘House of Self-Undoing’. Devastating outbursts from the monolithic guitar distortions and pounding drum lines heave against the delicately-poised verses which incorporate trip-hop’s titillating effects, resoundingly akin to Portishead’s experimental legacy. Wolfe’s appetite for crossing the threshold between sounds of old and new remains one of the most gripping aspects of this consuming live show; plunging asunder into an emotionally grappling and musically-deft world.
Wolfe eventually turns to preceding works which momentarily conjure differing auras. Consumed by heavily-laden, thick layers of fuzzy distortion and consuming choruses, such older tracks (‘16 Psyche’, ‘After the Fall’, ‘The Culling’) provide righteous throwbacks to the alt-metal sounds of the late 90’s-early 2000’s. Whilst the guitar solos and vocal lines wail to equal effect, Wolfe’s lyricism proves enticing against this effective pastiche; refining this once-popular scene (a-la Deftones, Korn, Evanescence) with impressively dramatic panache caught amongst the doom-and-gloom of her world (“Sweet dead eyes, I long for that illustrious hiss”).
When she decidedly strips away much of the noise, her solo acoustic renditions strike with a pertinently poised delicacy. ‘The Liminal’ sees the apex of this reassigned posture, with fragile, caressing vocals striking into the attentive audience with titanic reckoning from Wolfe’s darkened, gothic songwriting, even in light of the sparse arrangements on-stage (“I’m in your dreams, I’m in your song, now everybody sings along”).
As the greater powers that be return to close out Wolfe’s nurtured distortions and electronics in ‘Carrion Flowers’, the singer-songwriter concludes an emotionally-festered performance tonight. Whilst her vocals predictably drown amongst the crashing waves of distortions and blaring tones, Wolfe’s softened voice, hauntingly shimmering like Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, provides a steady contrast to the apocalyptic dealings amongst the backdrop. Cascading into this dooming abyss, Chelsea Wolfe beguiles in her dramatically gothic experimentation, seldom concocted convincingly in these times, ultimately bestowing an enticing omen for the future.
7.5/10
Chelsea Wolfe's latest LP, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, is out now via Loma Vista Recordings and can be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Jez Pennington whose work can be found here.
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