mxdwn Interview: Chelsea Wolfe on Her Latest Album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, The Importance of Following Her Intuition and The Wisdom of Her Favorite Tarot Card

Ever evolving and constantly pushing boundaries, American singer and songwriter Chelsea Wolfe has been active in the alternative rock scene for over fifteen years. Initially gaining both underground and critical popularity with her cult classic 2011 sophomore album Apokalypsis, Wolfe has maintained her knack for genre-bending, hypnotic music with a gothic touch throughout the years. 

Following in the footsteps of her previous work, hauntingly beautiful, atmospheric, and mesmerizing, her latest release, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, is both delicate and crushing, a testament not only to her evolution as an artist but to the strength and transformative power of resilience and the importance of knowing oneself. Deeply personal yet profoundly reaching and resonating to those who listen, She Reaches Out To shows Wolfe exploring even further subgenres such as shoegaze and trip-hop. Ranking in at #12 on mxdwn’s Best Albums of 2024, this album hears Wolfe place her vocals, previously distorted through reverb, center stage, and shockingly clear.

mxdwn had the pleasure of speaking with Chelsea Wolfe from her home in Northern California as she gears up for shows in Australia and New Zealand. 

Chelsea Wolfe plays a sold out show at Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY on March 12th 2024.

mxdwn: Hello! My name is Riley and I am a music features writer here at mxdwn. Today I am joined by Chelsea Wolfe. How are you doing today?

Chelsea Wolfe: I’m good. Thank you so much for having me. 

mxdwn: Where in the world are you right now? 

CW: I’m at home in Northern California. 

mxdwn: Just to get right into it, 2024 was a busy year for you! You released your latest album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She in February as well as an accompanying EP in November, all while you were touring the US and Europe. First off, congratulations, that’s a lot of accomplishments! 

CW: Thank you. Yeah it was a lot of touring. It was good to get back to it.

mxdwn: Do you have any favorite memories or moments from the past year that stick out to you as particularly memorable or career defining? 

CW: Honestly, there were so many special moments throughout the year. I can’t think of just one career defining moment, but there were just a lot of great ones. Getting to return to the Roadburn festival in the Netherlands, which I’ve gotten to play a few times now, and it feels like returning to a family of sorts. Getting to play two headline shows in London and both of them selling out felt really good, supportive and exciting. I did this thing where I started singing part of The Cranberries’ “Zombie” in the middle of my song “Tunnel Lights”, as a sort of mashup. Over the course of that European tour where I started doing that, people would start to sing along with that part and it was really sweet.  I don’t have a lot of songs that people sing along to {laughs} so it was really cute to have that moment in the set. 

mxdwn: That’s very cute! It sounds like such a special moment that you got to share with just your international fans which I feel as American artists it can be harder to connect with your supportive fans out there, so it must feel nice to be able to show them some of that love and support back. 

CW: Yeah. European tours have always been really special and I’m really grateful I get to do that. 

mxdwn: Speaking of special shows, you were able to finish out your 2024 shows by doing two very intimate shows at Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, such a cool venue and honestly seems like an amazing place to see you perform live. You were also on NPR’s Tiny Desk series as well in October. What was it like doing those more slow, intimate and stripped down sets as compared to the rest of your tour? 

CW:  It’s definitely more vulnerable than playing the full band set. I got really comfortable with that and it did become sort of like a comfort zone to have my full band up there with me. But I did an EP called Unbound where I stripped down some of the songs from the record, so I wanted to perform those live as well as older material that I had, so I decided to do that short tour, then Tiny Desk invited me back. Tiny Desk was definitely nerve wracking. I think that was one of the first acoustic performances I had done in a long time and it’s just in broad daylight, in the middle of an office {laughs} so it’s strangely very nerve wracking. It doesn’t seem like it would be, but it is. It was challenging but it was a good introduction to just the power of stripping things down and how intimate and special it can be. 

mxdwn: I remember reading somewhere that during the Tiny Desk concert people are still sitting at their desks and doing work during filming, is that true? 

CW: Some people do! There is an audience and some people will come and watch the performance, which is really nice. But then there’s some people who either choose to, or probably have to, keep working, so it’s interesting. 

mxdwn: I could definitely see how that’s nerve wracking, especially being in an environment so out of the typical stage performance. 

CW: I’ve heard that a lot of people get really nervous in that situation so I was like, “Okay, it’s not just me.” {laughs}.

mxdwn: Yours was one of my all time favorites, I have to say. Hands down I just thought your vocals were amazing. There was no telling that you were nervous at all. 

CW: Okay, that’s good {laughs}.

mxdwn: Speaking of your Unbound EP, it does feature remixes, rearrangements and stripped down versions of songs from She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. What did doing those versions of the songs bring to the record as a whole, or for you personally? 

CW: There was a showcase that I had done earlier in the year, it was in this barn and there literally wasn’t room for a full band, so that was my first experience having to strip the songs from She Reaches Out down to their very core. I found that I kind of loved it. I was surprised. It was just piano, guitar and vocals, and that was the first inspiration early on in the year. It wasn’t until later that year that I made the decision to actually record some of them, and I just wanted to get those versions out there. With this record, there’s a lot of representation of the number three. You know, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, and it’s like this past, present and future feeling. So I wanted to have three iterations of the record. The record itself, the remix record and then the acoustic EP. It was just cool for me to have this triptych of three different versions of these songs. 

mxdwn: I really like and appreciate that. It’s very prominent, your use of symbolism and intention behind this record, and the representation of the number three in this record’s lineup just adds to that. On the topic of symbolism, motion and fluidity is a theme throughout this work. I saw in my research how the circular, seemingly moving text on the album cover itself came from a sort of sonic, modular wall? 

CW: We were running a lot of different sounds through this wall, it was kind of like a transformer where you can sing a part or do a guitar part and then run it through all of these modular synths with the producer we worked with, and then it would come out on the other side sounding totally different and electronic. I did what I did with the title because I wanted it to reflect a cyclical loop. I love this title because it can be written as that infinite loop. That was a really cool way to represent the cyclical nature of just being, which is reflected in the songs as well. 

mxdwn: Of course, so much of that album is about the circular nature of healing and always coming back to the same parts of yourself. I love how that’s reflected in every part of the album, even down to the title. Jumping quickly back to your Unbound EP, you had a cover of Spiritbox’s “Cellar Door”, a band who you have collaborated with before by performing a cover of Korn’s song “Jaded” with Spiritbox lead vocalist Courtney LaPlante at their 30th anniversary show in LA. How did this fantastic pairing come to be and do you have any plans on continuing collaborating in the future? 

CW: I’m not sure, but that would be amazing if we could do that someday. It was really just simple. We were mutual fans and I had been doing little acoustic videos on TikTok, just little snippets of my songs or other songs, and I had just covered the chorus from “Cellar Door” because I resonated with the lyrics and felt like they kind of connected to She Reaches Out To, pain, rebirth and starting over. Folks just kind of latched onto it and my record label encouraged me to do a full cover and put it on there. I was happy to do so because I love the song. Then Courtney invited me to just sing along with the cover of “Jaded” at that show, so it was another really simple but fun thing. It’s just been really playful. Hopefully we can do something more solid together in the future.

mxdwn: I know me and a ton of other people would love to see that happen. It really is a fantastic pairing. Speaking of She Reaches Out To, I feel another really great thing about the album is your ability to seamlessly blend a lot of different genres and subgenres together. You have influence from industrial to trip-hop to shoegaze, what were you pulling inspiration from and where was your mind at, even outside of music, when you approached this album? 

CW: It was quite a journey. I started writing these songs in 2020 and then obviously, the pandemic happened, so everything took a lot longer. The demons were originally a lot more rock, and I was reaching out to these rock producers thinking it would be more of a rock album. But because everyone was hitting up everyone at once after the world opened back up, not a lot of people were available. Dave Sitek was already on my short list and was someone I had been interested in working with. But like I said, I was thinking this would be a rock album, so I wasn’t at first considering him. But then I was just like, “You know what? I’m just gonna hit up some producers that are a little bit less rock conventional and see what the universe has in store for this record.”. I met with Dave and he really appreciated how weird the songs were and wanted to make it even weirder. I was at a point where I was into change, transformation and making things, so I worked with him. Because of the nature of his style being, while he definitely works with rock artists, it’s a bit more indie, experimental and electronic. His production style and his studio are very synth based, modular synth based, so I just kind of rolled with that and allowed the songs to become more electronic and trip-hop influenced. That influence has obviously always been big with me, but this was one of the more purposeful, initial ways I put it into my own music. 

mxdwn: I also read that Dave Sitek has a lot of vintage equipment in his studio as well, were these vintage tools anyway part of the album’s development? 

CW: For sure. It was a cool mix of new and old synthesizes so there’s this, in my opinion, a vintage modern feel to the album where you can’t quite place it in any one certain time period. It’s what I like about it. It reminds me of when you watch a sci-fi movie that doesn’t exactly tell you what year it is. Maybe you think it’s the sixties but then a cell phone shows up {laughs).

mxdwn: I feel like that’s definitely reflected in the album. Even on the production side, everything feels so minimal but yet somehow so completely full of depth, rich and layered resonates all throughout the album. 

CW: That’s cool to hear that because that was one of the intentions, to somehow get a minimal feeling while still having all the layers that we wanted.

mxdwn: Yeah that definitely came through. I just remember the first time I listened through the album and was just blown away by your ability to have these two components at once, it’s so multifaceted. It would be hard not to discuss She Reaches Out To without discussing your spirituality. We talked earlier about the symbolism of the number three and the cyclical nature of healing, but you have also discussed the process of taking negative experiences and transmuting them to art. You’ve also stated how these songs have been channeled from future version of yourself, as well as citing witchcraft to be a driving force behind this album. How did your spiritual practice influence your work in this album?

CW: At this point it’s a natural part of my creative process because I do have a daily practice. I do use it to create containers to write and create. Setting a space and pulling a tarot card, being very intentional about my writing, and it’s something that I definitely got more into while writing this album. I was being very intentional about what I was saying and wanting some of the songs to almost feel like affirmations, for lack of a better word. Where I could be on stage and know that I’m going to be up there struggling with being up there and having everyone looking at me, because I get a bit of stage fright sometimes, and then being able to sing a song like “Place in the Sun”, where I’m literally telling myself like “I am safe in this body, I am safe in this heart.”, creating moments like that for myself and hopefully for others. The path of witchcraft has been a big part of my own healing process and also the place where I learned that, as we discussed earlier, healing is not linear and it;s not something that just happens once and you’re healed forever, you know. That’s another element to that cyclical nature of things is that you have to remember that these same things you thought you were healed from might come up again and you have to be forgiving to yourself and realize that it’s just a part of being human. We’re never going to fully reach any point where we know everything, are perfect and have everything in line. There’s always going to be challenges that are trying to pull us back into old ways and it’s hard. But having a daily practice where I can sort of recenter, reground and just having a community of people where we can support each other through these times is really helpful, and I definitely put a lot of that into the album. 

Photo: Ekaterina Gorbacheva

mxdwn: That’s so beautiful on so many levels. I keep seeing the image of you singing on stage, saying these affirmations for yourself, but there are so many people in the audience who also relate to that, who use those affirmations for themselves. It really is a special, personal connection between you as the artist and who is listening, since you intended those lyrics for yourself first. 

CW: Yeah, exactly. 

mxdwn: I noticed that with your Unbound EP that you also released a guided meditation that went along with it, another deeply personal and intimate aspect to your personal practice. Are there any other direct elements from your personal practice that you see yourself putting in future projects? 

CW: One thing I really loved doing with She Reaches Out To, the first iteration of it, was we did an oracle deck. There were ten cards, one associated with each song, and that was so cool for me because I am a person who pulled tarot and oracle daily and it’s such a big part of my life. To create this deck, and then an online version of the oracle where you can pull a card and it’ll associate with the song from the record was so much fun and so special. I’ve even used the online oracle myself and found it really profound, like “Oh, I really needed to hear that!”, and it’s cool because it’s coming from my past self, which is very like the album. I’ve gotten to do so many cool things. I did a custom incense blend that goes along with the song “Dusk” with Black Earth Botanica, one of my favorite incense and scent brands. In the future, I don’t know. I hope to keep doing things like all this where I’m collaborating with talented artists that I already love and maybe use my own practice to create something that I can share with the people who are listening to the songs.

mxdwn: That’s so beautiful! I love the oracle desk aspect, that’s so cool. Even these aspects are continuing to build the community that you already have around your work and giving back to them in a way that matters to you and your practice, I really love that. 

CW: Yeah. 

mxdwn: You’ve also stated before how She Reaches Out To is sort of a transitional work, as “a bridge, a liminal space in between two eras of myself”. Especially as you let your vocals take center stage in this album, did you find that to be a natural choice when it came to this album and did you come at it from that perspective or did it just happen that way? 

CW: I was definitely ready to put my voice more front and center. I also really love, not all ASMR but a lot of ASMR, and I liked the idea of putting a little bit of that into my songs and the recordings, making it very intimate and up close. I was singing right into the microphone where it’s picking up all of these sounds, it’s very intimate. I definitely wanted to reflect a little bit of ASMR on this record. Like you said, this time period of writing, recording, releasing and touring has been feeling very in-between, kind of liminal and messy, but learning a lot of stuff. So being a bit messy at times and letting the natural sounds of my throat or something go into the vocals was something I wanted to do. 

mxdwn: That’s not what I expected to hear has an influence! Now that you said it, I can totally see it. It really adds to the layer of rawness and realness to the album. 

CW: Yeah. I also think it had to do with embracing where my voice is now. As you get older, your voice does change a little bit. I was worried that some people would be like, “Oh, your voice sounds different.” but it just does that naturally as you get older and I wanted to embrace that. That’s another reason why I wanted to really put my voice up front and just sing in the way that was naturally coming out.

mxdwn: I like that sentiment. I feel that a lot of artists in their transitory periods, they’re not as comfortable with it or the direction they’re going towards. But I feel like when you embody that time of transition and move forward confidently it makes people excited to see what’s next. If She Reaches Out To is the bridge, do you have any idea of where you see your next step sonically going? 

CW: I’m already working on songs for whatever is coming next. I think Unbound is probably the most inspiring element because what I really want to start with this time is the songwriting, and not focusing on the production at first. A lot of times I go into a record, like I said thinking this would be a rock record, and this time I really just want to focus on songwriting and making the song itself when it’s stripped down to just vocals and guitar, or vocals and piano, and have a little bit more fun with that element of it before I worry exactly what production style it’s going to be. If this will be a rock song or a folk song, whatever it is, I’m just focusing on songwriting. I’m just having a lot of fun doing it. 

mxdwn: That way the song almost builds itself, sort of like an unfolding. 

CW: Yeah, exactly. Being able to do different versions of stuff is obviously on my mind, now that I know I’ve done that so much this past year. 

mxdwn: I’m sure that’s something fans are really excited to see, different sides of their favorite artist. I think that also just shows your versatility as an artist, whether it’s stripping down or rearranging existing songs or exploring a completely new style, so many different bodies of work that cover different genres. 

CW: For sure. I’m the same way as a music fan. I love to hear stripped down versions, or versions with just strings. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities.

mxdwn: Speaking of possibilities, your musical work isn’t just confined to albums. You’ve worked on movie scores, specifically your work with Tyler Bates for the 2022 horror film X and the sequel film MaXXXine. What was it like working on music for a horror movie as compared to working on music for an album? 

CW: It was very different in the way that I had very specific prompts and actual visuals to write to, the scenes, and basically being given tasks to do as a singer and writer. I actually really liked it. I am a person who loves a prompt, like a specific thing to write about, I’ve discovered that in the past few years that I really enjoy that. It was a totally new challenge and I learned a lot during it. Tyler was great to work with and taught me a lot and gave me a chance to stretch my voice in new ways. It was a real, real blessing to get to do that project. I’m really grateful for it. 

mxdwn: Do you think you could see yourself doing more of this in the future? 

CW: For sure. At some point I would love to score a movie myself. I love the idea of taking on a project that at some point, in lieu of making an album, spend a year making a film soundtrack or something. I don’t know if I’m there right now, cause I’m so into writing my own songs, but I guess it’s more like whenever the universe wants to drop the right project into my lap and I’ll take it. But yeah, I would definitely love to do that. 

Photographer: Owen Ela

mxdwn: I’m sure that it would be amazing. Your ability to conjure up an atmosphere is unlike any other, which I’m sure translates to the skills to make music for a movie. 

CW: Yeah. One of the things I had the most fun with was they asked me to cover this song, I don’t actually remember what year it was, maybe the nineteen tens? It was very old, called “Oui Oui Marie” and I was really struggling with it because it’s just so completely different from anything I listen to or have ever covered before. One night I just decided to do it in my own style and just use the lyrics and the intonation, but not worry so much about the original chords or anything like that, and came up with this version and sent it to them thinking they would be like “Oh no, this is not what we’re looking for.” but they ended up using it as the closing track in the last scene of the film. That was really special and it meant a lot because I was really following my intuition with that one. The fact that it actually got placed in the film was really, really exciting.

mxdwn: It’s definitely times like that when we listen to our intuition that we make some of our best work, and the work that we’re most proud of. 

CW: Yeah, definitely. 

mxdwn: I just have a few questions left for you. As we’re going into 2025, you have a few shows lined up. You’re playing at Cruel World and Fire In The Mountains, and you have an Australia and New Zealand leg of your She Reaches Out To tour. How are you feeling bringing these songs into 2025 with you?

CW: Good. I mean, there is a part of me that wants to move on, but I know that the album cycle has its own life and you have to keep living it as long as you know it feels right. Obviously, the Australia tour was booked a while ago and it needed some lead time, so I knew that it was going to be a little bit separated from the rest of the touring that we did last year. Honestly, I’m really excited to get to go back to Australia and New Zealand, because last time we went there, pretty much everyone in my band got Covid right away and I miraculously didn’t. I was forced to do all the shows solo, which was fine, but that just wasn’t what I was prepared for, so I felt a little bit bad. So this will be great, I’m hoping everyone will remain healthy and we can do these full band productions. 

mxdwn: I’m sure they’re all looking forward to that as well, especially being able to fully rock out, which I’m sure they did last time, but this time with the backing of the full band. 

CW: Yeah totally. It’s a different energy with the full band.

mxdwn: I just have one more for you. I saw your Perfectly Imperfect Instagram interview, and we had talked before about your daily tarot card pull. Do you have a favorite Tarot card or one that has been following you around for a while? 

CW: My favorite has always been The Hermit. I definitely self identify as a hermit and I love to spend time alone and really go inward. So much of my songwriting process is often very much with my eyes closed, in my own little world, and that kind of feels like The Hermit. But I also love the trust element that comes with, like we said, following your intuition. The Hermit card shows someone with a lantern and the energy of the card is that the lantern only lights one step ahead, so you kind of have to keep trusting as you’re stepping forward, you’re not seeing the whole path in front of you. But if you follow your intuition and inner bell, you know you’re going to be on the right path as long as you keep following that step that you can see in the light.