Chelsea Wolfe’s name has become synonymous with a sense of melancholy. On ‘Abyss’ she lamented her tempestuous psyche, but on its follow up, ‘Hiss Spun’, she delves further in an attempt to find the beauty hidden within the pain and purge it in the process. This time round she is embracing her emotions as a means of control.
Much like the topics she tackles, the musical scope here is vast, more aggressive and visceral. By accentuating the low end and accompanying it with a shedload of fuzz, which has become a staple, ‘Hiss Spun’ is as punishing as it is beautiful.
There is a smothering warmth that cloaks the record, contrasting with the cold outside the doors of the snow-covered Salem studio where Wolfe created it. It was during one of these periods of hibernation that the sample for the static-filled Particle Flux originated.
The sound of her fingers running over the pages of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is one of a number of found sounds incorporated by Wolfe and collaborator Ben Chisholm, from street construction in Prague to a howling coyote.
These real life moments make the record more tangible, as do the tactile meanings associated with the song titles: Flux representing movement and flow, Welt and Scrape physicality and brutality. What lies beneath these titles, though, is much more expansive than their basic meanings.
Offering, for example, is Wolfe writing from the perspective of California’s Salton Sea and addressing climate change. “A thousand lives, lived in circles, a planet burning at the seams, skeletal sand as a lesson, that became an offering,” she sings.
‘Hiss Spun’ thrives on an intensity akin to white noise. Even Twin Fawn, which lulls us into a false sense of security with its stripped back opening, eventually goes for the jugular. We just have to wait for it. Wolfe’s vocals mesmerise us, allowing the music to hit us like pummeling waves.
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