The Girl who cried 'Wolfe'

As is often true of the successful, the famous and the cultishly adored, Chelsea Wolfe presents a fascinating swirl of contradictions. Raised in sunny Sacramento she dresses like a death metal roadie (up close the 24 year old is a Lisbeth Salander vision of snaking goth tattoos and translucent skin), combines harrowing songwriting with girl-next door affability and comes across friendly and eerily distant in the same heartbeat. She laughs a lot yet the air of melancholy congealed about her never really dissipates.

She is, not to put too fine a point on it, an intriguing and, at cursory inspection, somewhat unknowable songwriter – qualities which probably explain her profoundly enigmatic sound. Over a five year career, Wolfe has hopscotched willfully between genres. She first came to attention via a viral cover of notorious Norwegian death metallers Burzum (whose solitary member Varg Vikernes was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and arson); in 2012 she released an acoustic record so stripped down it occasionally felt it wasn’t there at all; her latest album, Pain is Beauty, is full of Giorgio Moroder-esque retro electronica. Backstage at Dublin’s Button Factory Wolfe holds herself perfectly still but clearly this is an illusion. As an artist she’s always moving, always reinventing.
“The electronic songs, I wrote with my bandmate Ben a few years go. Before my acoustic record came out, in fact. Initially I thought they might function as a side-project. Then I realized that, actually, I didn’t want to put limits on the music I make as ‘Chelsea Wolfe’. This is a solo project which means I can do different incarnations.”
Though she has never made a devil sign on stage or shrieked, wounded Klingon-style, into her microphone, Wolfe is flattered to be associated with death metal. Her music is creepy quiet as often as it is loud and yet she feels a genuine affinity with the metal community. There is beauty, even tranquility, in untrammeled chaos and she finds that death metal can have liberating, almost blissed-out qualities.
“There is something in white noise that I love,” she says. “I love the peace amidst the chaos. I feel it is something that black metal draws on and which I draw on also. It doesn’t puzzle me that I would be associated with the metal scene. I was introduced to a lot of people through that Burzum song. I did it for fun. It was the first many of my fans heard of me.”
If Hot Press was that sort of magazine we might cynically pitch Wolfe as the indie Lady Gaga. Physically they sort of look the same, projecting an artful awkwardness that feels simultaneously distant and very human. Certainly, Wolfe has a Gaga-esque eye for extreme fashion. Early on, she would perform with her face behind a veil; subsequent press shots have seen her sporting bizarre headdresses and gazing blank-eyed at the camera in an expression of provocative weirdness.
Where the comparison falls down (assuming it ever stood up) is in the fact that, while Lady Gaga dresses that way to draw attention, Wolfe has precisely the opposite intent. Chronically introverted, for her fashion is a distraction tactic – she wants you to be blinded by the couture so that you do not stare too closely at the nervous songwriter beyond.
“I was always shy,” she says.”That is why I never imagined I would be doing music in front of people. I still have challenges in terms of stage fright. It is definitely something I have to overcome over and over. Early on, I would wear a veil and cover myself and feel invisible. Eventually I got into fashion and dressing up - it was a way to slip into character and feel confident. Although I still have issues with stage fight I have gotten a lot better and am slowly opening myself up to that aspect of the business.”
She feels her shyness goes back to adolescence. Quiet and awkward she was something of an outcast in school. It was hard for her to imagine she would ever fit in. What’s changed is that , nowadays, she appreciates having an outsider’s perspective whereas, as a kid, she wanted to rub along with others.
“High school was not a good time for me,” she remembers. “I felt I was some weird outcast. I was always trying to fit in. If I ever have a child I will say to them,’ don’t worry about fitting in’. It’s just high school and is so stupid. Because I wanted to be like everyone else, I didn’t take music seriously. I was always running from it. I went to a bunch of different colleges after I graduated. I tried several career paths. None worked. Eventually it became clear music was the only option.”

Pain is Beauty is out now