Chelsea Wolfe on Rebirth, Witchcraft and Embracing the Liminal

Words and Photography: Charlotte Amy Landrum

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Combining tenderness with droning guitar, Chelsea Wolfe is an artist who crosses genres. From curating a specific musical style of her own, the artist has accumulated an array of listeners - from traditional metal fans, to folk appreciators, to enjoyers of ambient sounds. Her lyrics are deeply personal, imagery gorgeously monochrome and Wolfe’s work has had a constant focus on the otherworldly - it is clear why she garners so many dedicated listeners; she offers atmospheric sounds which are almost therapeutic to listen to.

Wolfe has released her seventh studio album: She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, honing in on themes of rebirth, the in-between spaces of life and an embrace of fear. Ahead of her show at Heaven, I had the pleasure of photographing and chatting with the musician about dreams, witchcraft and working on one of the most notable horror series of the last decade, Ti West’s X (2022) and its highly anticipated follow up MaXXXine (2024).

Polyester: How long have you practiced witchcraft and how does it intertwine with your creative practice?

It's something that I've done intuitively since I was young. I was introduced to certain practices by my grandmother, but I didn't really have a name for it. I feel like five or six years ago I started to take it more seriously and calling myself a witch and making those practices more routine in my daily life. It's definitely translated over to my creative process as well. I intentionally sit down to write and create a space and call circle and often pull a tarot card if I don't know where to start with a song.

You've spoken a lot about embracing fears and the unknown. What was one of the most important aspects in this journey?

I feel like that's been a common theme. It kind of started with the theme of sleep paralysis, which is something that I've had my whole life where the sort of characters from my dreams, these shadow beings, are still in the room with me when I wake up. Something about that created a connection to the idea of other realms and the subconscious realm and being less afraid of it and trying to understand it. 

There is a lot of shadow work to be done and it can be scary but it's always been important work for me. I'm at a space now where this new album is very much about the in-between space. There's a lot of literal unknowns in my life, and I'm making a lot of changes and big new decisions for myself and that's almost more scary than the inner unknown. But it's also exciting. We talked about the liminal a lot in this world as this interesting, aesthetic thing, but it's actually intense when you're in that space, you know?

What is one of the first things in terms of either art, music, nature or film that you remember encountering that had the same stylistics that you have today. The first time you remember feeling really inspired?

If we're talking like, early early, I think when I was a little kid, the first poem I remember writing was like, just that realization, almost like you're in a movie where all the different sounds and sensations kind of start to come together. I just remember being outside and it started raining and there was a siren going by, and then all the dogs in the neighborhood started howling. The interplay of all these sounds and sensations formed into my first poem as a kid. It's still the same way, I get really overstimulated pretty easily, and so I think that kind of goes into my songwriting as well. Sometimes all the different things just feel like they're hitting me at once and I don't have the proper tools to process that, so I ended up putting it into music because that's my way of processing life.

I read that you were inspired by the film Angel’s Egg (1985) with the new album. I love that film so much, what was it about that film that you drew inspiration from?

First I watched it without subtitles, so I didn't actually know what the dialogue was. That was the only version I could find on YouTube at the time. So when I was watching it, it was more of a visual film for me. I was really drawn to the idea of this girl protecting this mysterious egg. I don't feel like it was certain for most of the movie what was inside the egg. But for me, it represented this idea of possibility and mystery. It was such a beautiful world as well. Then a few years later when I was working on my album, I looked at Marjorie Cameron's The Black Egg painting, and it was really drawn to that as well and then remembered Angel's Egg. The idea of using this egg for my artwork just kind of came together in a moment.

Are there any other films that you've taken inspiration from?

Definitely. When I put up my first album, The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman was a big visual reference for me and a big inspiration. 

The MaXXXine trailer came out today. I'm really excited, It looks amazing. How was it working on the soundtrack for X (2022)?

It was great. It was such a cool experience. I've always wanted to do score work and Tyler Bates who does a tonne of score work invited me to collaborate on that with him. And my main job was vocalisation sound and things like that. It was a great learning experience. It was really interesting to write to picture, I've never done that before. It was really cool and getting different assignments to do, especially when you’re usually really self led in art. I lent some vocals to the MaXXXine trailer as well but this time I just went in for a session and I didn't write like original music, I was just on the spot trying out different stuff.