SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: CHELSEA WOLFE – UNBOUND

CHELSEA WOLFE
UNBOUND
SARGENT HOUSE

Having released the full-length LP She Reaches Out To She Reaches To She earlier this year, there’s an unsatisfying, critical urge to place these stripped down recordings on Unbound in juxtaposition against their full-tilt predecessors. To what end? Do not give into temptation, at least not yet. It doesn’t need a tidy box or compartment. Just consider Unbound a separate entity, a showcase of Wolfe’s range and command of her voice.

As a pound of flesh ripped from Chelsea Wolfe’s goth/folk/industrial bodice, the songs on Unbound bunker in despair. There’s no catharsis or third-act reclamation of hope. The brevity of the collection provides a canvas for Caravaggian darkness that can be wiped away (although a latency remains) after 16 minutes; a full album in this headspace would have suffocated. That’s neither to suggest that She Reaches Out gave us multiple lifelines nor that Unbound needs one at all—just that the latter demands and encourages fragility, lingering, and lament.

Her fans appreciate a descent into dystopia, soundtracked by Wolfe’s brittle warble. It won’t expand her appeal, but among contemporary singer-songwriter voices she steadfastly stands as a dedicated auteur to tone and not a decadent chameleon. On Unbound, a Wes Anderson of bedroom gloom.

Now, having considered Unbound on its own merit, investigate the differences. Air She Reaches Out’s “The Liminal” alongside Unbound’s, specifically the delivery of the lyric

“Something tethered me to /
Time and space in-between /
The more you seek, the more you’ll see /
Nothing dies, but nothing thrives /
In this world, this world.”

This moment, in its quiet agony, shouted from the pulpit and delivered the entrancing beauty of the EP’s reimagining.

In our current, shared continental depression, Wolfe might be the music of our collective mourning, an excuse to feel loss for what it is, but also what it could inspire for the future. Unbound isn’t a standalone album so much as a flask of emotion to put in your pocket, to save for later when you need it most.

If She Reaches Out To She Reaches To She represents a death rattle, a cathartic scream into the void, Unbound is the unsilent suffering. Beautiful and grisly, laid bare to expose the scattered, unmolded imperfections of grief even as the revenge plot takes shape in the shadows.

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