Stream: Chelsea Wolfe, ’16 Psyche’

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Chelsea Wolfe (photo by Nick Fancher)

Chelsea Wolfe’s sixth album, “Hiss Spun,” was recorded in Salem, Mass., during winter. In these cold, icy surroundings, she explored the darkness within herself and the chaos of the world outside. “I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free,” Wolfe says, but in trying to make sense of the spiraling madness, she realized that this state of despair goes back to the dawn of civilization. “You’re just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasons or for no reason at all, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it’s been fucked for a long time, it’s been fucked since the beginning. It’s overwhelming and I have to write about it.”

Lyrically, the new album sources Wolfe’s personal suffering, coming to terms with family history, anger, and self-destruction through fuzz, distortion, and hard, moody rock. “The album is cyclical, like me and my moods,“ she explains. “Cycles, obsession, spinning, centrifugal force—all with gut feelings as the center of the self.” But rather than some sort of self-pity, Wolfe sees it as a way to embrace herself and purge those demons through confrontation. “I got tired of trying to disappear. The record became very personal in that way. I wanted to open up more, but also create my own reality.” Mixed in with the instruments, her longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm weaved an assortment of found sounds that he’s collected over the years: street construction in Prague, a coyote outside Wolfe’s California home, machinery at a friend’s warehouse, thumbing pages from a Walt Whitman book, bombs and animal sounds. 

“16 Psyche” is big and dark. The title relates to an asteroid named after the Greek goddess of the soul that scientists are planning to explore in the next decade, and it’s made entirely of metal.

“Hiss Spun” comes out Sept. 22 on Sargent House.

||| Stream: “16 Psyche”

||| Live: Chelsea Wolfe performs Sept. 30 at Regent Theater, with Youth Code opening. Tickets.