Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today's song is "16 Psyche" by Chelsea Wolfe, from the 2017 album Hiss Spun, out September 22nd on Sargent House.
Chelsea Wolfe - 16 Psyche (MP3)
Chelsea Wolfe has ascended to a place of unquestioned queenship over what Goth means in 2017. Through her last four records, Wolfe has crystallized an aesthetic space of hollow shore music. Her music began with organic acoustic guitars and lives today amidst influences of doom metal, drone music, aggressive ambient, and darkwave. Wolfe's last record, the John Congleton-produced Abyss saw her at her largest, most anthemic, and most metallic.
"16 Psyche" opens with bleak guitars and moves into a full body headbanger trudge as Wolfe goes into a tale of the darkness and hope of a string of sexual encounters. Through the tones and themes of Wolfe's work is an attraction to darkness and disconnection as a way of hope and self-conception. The same is echoed here. "They crawl / up my legs / let me wrap you up in these thighs / gets me out of my head again." The soaring anthemic qualities of her previous work with Congleton and Russian Circles guitarist Mike Sullivan in full swing. This is a song for a helicopter ride over the Russian Tyga or a song to hold your head up and face hard during a 4 AM walk of shame. Either way, it's all Chelsea Wolfe.
This August through September, Wolfe is headlining a US tour with support from by hardcore / industrial duo Youth Code, including a Halloween Eve, Monday, October 30th show at The Showbox. The dissonance in audiences brought by this bill should make for an incredible live energy. Keep up with tour movements on her Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Below you can hear the second single off Hiss Spun, the full-on funeral-doom track "Vex."
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on The Mid…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on The Mid…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on The Mid…
