Chelsea Wolfe - Pain Is Beauty

Pallid and pouting, at cursory inspection California’s Chelsea Wolfe looks like a latter-day goth straight from the casting agency. Actually, she’s more diverse than her image might suggest, her catalogue veering between plugged-in indie angst and marrow-stripped acoustica (containing, yes, lots of indie angst too).
With a faint gust of buzz at her back, she has released her most diverse and substantial collection yet: ‘Feral Love’ suggests Kim Gordon fronting early Nine Inch Nails; the throbbing ‘The Warden’ is a delicious, delirious synth anthem, an elegiac banger that feels forever in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own cosmic introspection. In an utterly different vein, ‘Destruction Makes The World Burn Brighter’ is a rough hewn fuzz-rocker (think Mazzy Star locked in a torture dungeon with Zola Jesus), while ‘Reins’ is a tattered dirge that would not seem out of place on the score to a cheesy fantasy movie. It’s an engaging mix of genres, even if the pervasive gloom never really lifts. Whether Wolfe has something original to say is, however, harder to discern. For much of Pain is Beauty it sounds as if she is trying different poses on for size. Next time she’ll need to decide which ones really fit.

Key Track: 'The Warden'