Why Chelsea Wolfe Stands Out

Chelsea Wolfe is one of those artists who has set a high bar for herself, and seven albums into her career it’s easy for media types to shrug off her music as “more of the same.” She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She arrives as her first solo release since 2019’s Birth of Violence, which is the longest break Wolfe has taken in her career, and that time gap has helped illustrate the stark difference in ability between her and the majority of artists who have been putting out music in the interim. While this album is not particularly new ground for Wolfe, it’s comparatively a revelation to hear an artist with actual personality and songwriting ability throw every part of herself into a project.

This isn’t just a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder: the visceral intensity and passion in Wolfe’s music is obvious, and it’s to the point that it makes it seem like other artists don’t even try. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She is in the blend of electronics and doomy folk that has typified a lot of Wolfe’s work, and it’s always a dynamic sound with a lot of fascinating tensions. The beauty of Wolfe’s voice is often clashing with the industrial ugliness; sometimes there’s an “angel of doom” vibe as her vocals float above the chaos. And even when Wolfe’s songs are more quiet and calm, such as the trip-hoppy “Salt,” there’s a haunting surrealism on display that makes it feel unconventional.

Wolfe’s music is dark, and on the surface it’s easy to categorize her as being a typical depressing goth. This undersells the natural catharsis in the songs, and the themes of hope and pulling through difficult times that sneak into her work. Wolfe has said she wrote this album after achieving sobriety and a few songs like “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” literally deal with cutting ties with toxic elements in your life; others, like “Tunnel Lights,” are about overcoming hopeless-feeling situations and not giving up. She avoids clichés, dealing with these fairly well-worn themes through metaphor, performance, and poetry. There’s no pretending on this album: Wolfe’s authentic emotions are on full display, and at no point does it feel like she is putting on a show to try to seem cool or intelligent.

The best part of Wolfe’s music is that she writes actual songs with hooks. In this dark/doomy musical space, there are so many artists who just make unpleasant confrontational music with no real rhyme or reason to it — there’s an audience for that kind of thing, but I really value artists like this who can put the same feelings into their work while finding that balance between listenability and experimentation. In particular, “Dusk” and “Everything Turns Blue” are legitimately catchy, and that extra layer of craft lets these songs sink in more because it’s actually easy to listen to them over and over. And it adds to the feeling that there is logic and thought in everything; no moments are wasted and the songs properly build up and break down when the mood is right.

While that songwriting separates Wolfe from a lot of the darkness/doom crowd, it’s her intensity that puts her above a lot of the indie singer/songwriter fare currently. So much of it is coffee-house and self-consciously pretty; meanwhile, this is like plunging into an abyss and actually experiencing something that feels raw and human. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She might be Wolfe’s strongest album, and it shows that she has few equals when it comes to making music that is heavy and emotionally impactful.

On “Sugarcoat,” Blushing Keeps the 90s Dream Alive

Nostalgia is a disease. Constantly lingering in the past is the easiest way to never move forward, and assuming things used to be better often prevents people from enjoying greatness that is right in front of them. That being said: the 90s were pretty awesome, weren’t they? It was definitely the best decade, and I’m not just saying this because it was when I was a child who easily made friends and had no responsibilities.

This band, Blushing, really likes the 90s. They have a song on their new album, Sugarcoat, called “Tamogotchi.” Their sugary bubble-grunge sound is the product of a group of people who believe that the music industry and the world was a better place when Letters to Cleo was a prominent band (they may be right). There is an oddly endearing shamelessness to this whole endeavor — a lot of the presentation and style borders on feeling cynical in its Millennial pandering, but the songs also have a certain charm that makes them feel convincingly sincere.

On the surface, Sugarcoat is a straight-forward pop-rock album that isn’t particularly interested in probing deep into questions about the human condition. There’s not much to say about the individual songs except that there are a lot of bright, catchy melodies, and everything is executed sharply in terms of what the band is trying to do. If you enjoy relatively mindless, fun guitar pop, you will like this album. So instead of focusing on that, indulge me while I overanalyze the nostalgic aspect of this thing.

Because what is most interesting about Sugarcoat is how it (maybe intentionally) functions as a critique of itself. Nostalgia is primarily a result of how our minds remember all the good times and forget the bad ones, and that is also what is happening on this album in all facets from the sound to the packaging. It’s a constant sugar rush of bright colorful hooks and sweet vocals, and it’s all so on-the-nose (again, they called a song “Tamagotchi”) that a sense of darkness creeps in, as the band starts to resemble one of those groups that is a little too happy and you start to think they’re a cult.

What’s really being sold here is a kind of escapism, a retreat for some listeners into the carefree days of childhood. But it’s also a fantasy that at times feels hollow, because listening to this, you’d think nothing bad ever happened in the 90s and everyone was living in some kind of ultra-colorful music video. So there is this constant tension on the album between the pleasurable sounds and the slightly gross way it insists on looking backwards through the most rose-colored glasses imaginable. The funny thing is, this ambivalence is what ultimately makes me want to recommend the album: it has all these catchy songs, and — whether intended or not — there are elements in the music that raise these questions and make it surprisingly thought-provoking.

Cassandra Jenkins Makes Boredom and Loneliness Sound Glorious

On first blush, the low-key folk stylings of Cassandra Jenkins could be mistaken for the legions of bland singer-songwriter types who create their idea of “sad music” without bringing original sound or thought to the table. But her last album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, showed her expanding her sound and experimenting creatively, especially on the stand-out track “Hard Drive,” which winded through five-and-a-half minutes of whispery storytelling with saxophone and piano flourishes. Jenkins’ latest album, My Light, My Destroyer, shows continued growth, as uneventful shifts at a flower shop, hotel room stays, and trips to Petco are turned into high-definition songs full of existential questions.

The specificity in the lyrics is a key to making this album stand out. My Light, My Destroyer presents what feels like a literal road map of experiences and memories. Jenkins zooms in on tiny details and is able to expand them into big ideas: on “Clams Casino,” someone ordering the titular dish without knowing what it is stands in for the feeling of aimlessness many of us have wandering through life. The somewhat grungy “Petco” turns her trips to the pet store into ruminations on whether she can ever take care of a pet or even herself. The most prominent location is “Aurora, IL,” and on that song she spends a night in a hotel on tour staring into space and the room’s ceiling — material that fits the song’s dreamy rock vibe with its strings and surprisingly heavy guitar.

Jenkins gets the musical part of storytelling also, and every song on My Light, My Destroyer sounds the way it feels it should sound. The highlight of the album — and of 2024 music in general — is “Delphinium Blue,” which is where all of Jenkins’ gifts come together. She’s working in a flower shop while longing for someone and her spoken-word recitation of her tasks (“chin up/stay on task/wash the windows/count the cash”) is juxtaposed with her desire while the music swells with beautiful almost shoegaze-like noise. It’s probably the most accurate depiction of a peaceful, mundane job in a song, and it’s another example of how Jenkins can make ordinary life sound spectacular and tiny moments feel massive.

For all I know, the stories Jenkins is telling could be fiction. But these songs are detailed and lived-in enough that the distinction doesn’t really matter — these are reflections on loneliness, anxiety, and yearning that feel completely believable and authentic. And all of the themes are bolstered by a sense of wonder that particularly comes through in more experimental songs like “Betelgeuse” where she’s just talking while looking into the stars. My Light, My Destroyer perfectly captures how the world is vast and awe-inspiring — which makes it that much more difficult to find your place in it.