CHELSEA WOLFE: APOKALYPSIS (2011)
1) Primal / Carnal; 2) Mer; 3)
Tracks (Tall Bodies); 4) Demons; 5) Movie Screen; 6) The Wasteland; 7) Moses;
8) Friedrichshain; 9) Pale On Pale; 10) To The Forest, Towards The Sea.
This is the record that properly put Chelsea
Wolfe on the map — her first well-produced, fully coherent, patently conceptual
album, completely unafraid of its own pretentiousness, but, perhaps, somewhat
too unaware of its own corniness. I will not argue that any specific year in
our lifetime is a better or a worse year to put out an album called Apokalypsis, but I will argue that spelling the name out in Greek alphabet is gimmicky
(unless you are actually exploring Greek musical elements, or at least are
capable of reading the New Testament in its original form), and do not get me
started on that album cover — too much time spent watching The Exorcist?
The music itself also starts and ends with a
gimmick: ʽPrimal / Carnalʼ starts the show off with twenty five seconds of
thoroughly non-scary hissing, sputtering, and roaring — Chelsea's
not-too-subtle way of letting you know that on this record, we will be
exploring the darker corners of your violent subconscious and animal instincts
— and after we're done, ʽTo The Forest, Towards The Seaʼ wraps things up with
three minutes of rather amateurish ghostly ambience, constructed mostly of
electronic echoes; at the very end, the protagonist whispers "what's
happening to me?" because otherwise, you wouldn't be able to guess that something
is happening to her. Oh well, at least the album cover shows no signs of
lycanthropy.
In between all this, Chelsea Wolfe positions
herself as the Alanis Morissette of Goth-rock (pop, folk, whatever): her
melodies are barely enough interesting not to write her off as a total
disaster, her originality and individuality are extremely questionable, her
balance between commercial appeal and artistic expression is shaky and
unsatisfactory, yet there is sufficient evidence on the whole that she is really
trying to make her mark, and that she is engaging in this stuff without as much
cold-hearted market calculation as, say, the artist exotically known as Lana
del Rey. Most of the reviews of the album were predictably crammed to the brim
with references to Chelsea's predecessors and influences, from Siouxsie &
The Banshees to Portishead to The Knife and even to PJ Harvey, but her saving
grace is that there is no single overriding influence here: a direct comparison
with any one of these artists would immediately bring on obvious differences.
On the other hand, there is no clear indication that Chelsea Wolfe is anything
more than a diligent summing up of all these parts, either.
The album fails to move me, which means, from
my perspective, that it fails, period:
Apokalypsis is a dark atmospheric
painting whose chief artistic goal is to scare you and perturb you, but the bad
news is that Chelsea Wolfe is not scary, she is just a girl who is infatuated
with scary things, and is happy enough to present to you the latest results of
her Devil's Ball cosplay. As an example, take the album's longest track, ʽPale
On Paleʼ. Slow, sludgy, driven by a minimalistic doom bass riff and a
predictable organ pattern, it invents nothing that has not already been
invented by Black Sabbath or Bardo Pond, features a fairly conventional vocal
delivery (any potentially subtle nuances of which are drowned in the cavernous
mix), and, at best, works as not-too-irritating somber background muzak.
(Unless you know jack shit about the history of «mope rock» and ignorantly
start from scratch... oh, sorry, that is supposed to be called «strip yourself
of accumulated biases and embrace the artistic experience with an open mind»).
It does become irritating at the end, though, when she starts screaming. She
has pretty strong lungs when it comes to screaming, but the track is just not
suspenseful enough to warrant the screaming conclusion. For a much better
similar experience, please check out ʽCareful With That Axe, Eugeneʼ — now
there's some first-rate shit that never gets old.
Some of the tracks are decidedly more
appealing, though. ʽMerʼ has a light-flowing, syncopated, jazzy groove that is
reminiscent of classic Morphine, and Chelsea's free-form poetic rant, which
nobody is forced to take at face value, hops on those musical waves in a
morosely-merry pattern. The new arrangement of ʽMosesʼ is cleaner, heavier,
more memorable than the original, although, again, even a band like Black
Mountain did that sort of heavy-trotting, doom-facing, me-against-the-brutal-rhythm-section
schtick with more cutting edge. The complex arrangement of ʽMovie Screenʼ, with
its multiple vocal and instrumental overdubs intertwined with each other like a
bunch of will-o-wisps, can get trippy-psychedelic if you put it on replay and
turn the headphone volume up to the max (though there is really no reason that
you should). Even so, I have to struggle a bit to put all these justifications
into words.
In a way, I guess this is precisely how it
works in the 2010s — I mean, somebody
has to keep that dark-folk vibe alive, right? and I have no problem with Chelsea
Wolfe doing it, although, honestly, in this situation I'd rather settle for
something more straightforwardly campy and derivative, like Blood Ceremony.
This record just takes itself way too seriously for me to enjoy my popcorn, yet
not seriously enough to make me put aside the popcorn and indoctrinate myself
to the new epiphany. If anything, I still remain partial to the safekeeping of
me eyeballs.
Exactly.
ReplyDeleteI image this is a fun-to-record/boring-to-listen album and it really seems to me that Chelsea has a bit inadequate self-esteem. But if we take the personal things out of scope, I think it's quite objective to say that dark-folk should not be eliminating the pop-aspect and the will to appeal to the audience. These two subjects are completely irrelevant to each other but listening to this particular record it seems as if the rule is "the duller, the artier".