Where the sparse arrangements of her 2012 acoustic album, Unknown Rooms, spotlighted the incremental fluctuations of her voice, Chelsea Wolfe's Pain Is Beauty feels like a more wide-angled affair, folding her soprano into swaths of strings and pulsating synths until the result feels as a vast and intimidating as the wild expanses of land and water she's singing about. Wolfe has called the album her "love-letter to nature," and while the switch to a more electronic palette would seem to contradict this mission statement, the repetitive, melodically cyclical chorus on "The Waves Have Come" grows with the awe-inspiring momentum of a real-life tornado. Fittingly, there's a trace of the literary notion of the sublime (or the co-existence of terror and ecstasy) in the scenario she describes in the song: When earth cracks open and swallows then we'll never be tired again, and we'll be given everything the moment we realize we're not in control. Pain is Beauty is out September 3 via Sargent House.
Stream: Chelsea Wolfe, "The Waves Have Come"
Tourdates:
8/25 Los Angeles, CA - FYF Fest, LA Historical Park
9/01 Tucson, AZ - HOCO Festival
9/03 Phoenix, AZ - The Crescent Ballroom *
9/04 Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad *
9/06 Austin, TX – Mohawk *
9/07 Houston, TX - Fitzgerald’s *
9/08 New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jacks *
9/09 Atlanta, GA - The Earl *
9/10 Chapel Hill - Local 506 *
9/11 Washington DC - Rock and Roll Hotel *
9/13 NYC, New York - Bowery Ballroom *
9/14 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer *
9/15 Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair *
9/17 Toronto, ONT - The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
9/19 Pontiac, MI - The Pike Room at Crofoot Ballroom *
9/20 Lexington, KY - Boomslang Festival *
9/21 Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge *
9/22 Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center *
9/24 Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge *
