On Chelsea Wolfe‘s ninth full-length album, The Dark, what should feel like an impenetrable fortress of fog and gloom is mostly drab and quite liminal.
Release date: August 21, 2026 | Loma Vista Recordings | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Website
Listening to an album with such a broad title can either really work or really backfire, especially when it’s by an artist who I’m not entirely familiar with. As far as I know, Chelsea Wolfe is a name that has gotten quite the bit of buzz after she released She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, bolstered by Dave Sitek’s electro production. Before that, however, I remember hearing some stuff from 2017’s Hiss Spun and was blown away by how robust and thick its sludge-coated atmosphere is. Its mountain-crushing guitar tone was certainly a welcoming jolt of witchy doom right from the beginning, and it had me genuinely intrigued for what was to come from the Californian singer-songwriter. Yet the more I listen to Wolfe whisper or howl her way through The Dark, her ninth studio LP, the more I wish this didn’t sound so much like Hot Topic Aimee Mann.
Wolfe’s earliest albums were straight-up folk, so on one hand, I get this new folk-inflected album’s jarring tonal shifts, especially when juxtaposed with a title as foreboding as The Dark. On the other, such a boilerplate album title doesn’t bode well for these ten new numbers, each one wimpier and more drab than the next. Production and mixing is singlehandedly the biggest bummer with this project. Even with Ben Chisholm returning to produce all but one song (the lone exception being the lead single “Cold”), with new producer Jennifer Decilveo (Bat for Lashes, Hozier) on board, the low presence of electric guitar and overly dry, muffled live drums are terrible fits for whatever Wolfe wants to accomplish. Mixing-wise, most of the material sounds flat, her breathy indie voice barely reaching a level that’s high enough above the instrumentation. The Dark is supposed to be her most mature effort to date, but this overused production style coupled with anemic mixing has me thinking Chelsea Wolfe still needs a nap instead.
I’m still bummed about how she and her team handled production, but what’s even drearier here is most of the music. With the exceptions of “Turn the Key” and “Death Is Not the End”, two compositions that actually do flirt with raising stakes, so many other songs lack that visceral sort of hook that The Dark demands. Just because Wolfe is aiming to create contrast between soft and heavy, light and dark, it does not mean that each song should put us to sleep. It also does not excuse such banal lyrics as ‘Come into the light / Creature of the night‘–wow, that’s such an elegant turn of phrase. It’s a shame because so much of the record’s instrumental side is provided by expert musicians like bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, drummer Matt Chamberlain, and Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck. Even Chelsea Wolfe herself has an excellent voice, if a little too wispy at times, but songs like “Swallower”, “Halo”, and “I’m Not There” recall singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann or Sarah McLachlan at their most tedious.
Fortunately, I actually do appreciate the way the last two tracks turned out. “Death Is Not the End”, a structural carbon copy of “Happier than Ever” by Billie Eilish–by which I mean it starts out whisper-quiet, then goes off hard— mostly works. The rusty guitar doom-rock spiral it goes down under would fit right in on Hiss Spun. That’s right before “Dancer in the Sky” comes on, mind you. It’s another folky ballad, this time anchored by piano and gentle strokes of violin, but man, if every other song on The Dark had a melody this lovely, not to mention inspired, I might have actually cared about this overall LP.
I hate to say it, but this particular Chelsea Wolfe album just isn’t worth your time. It certainly wasn’t worth mine, outside of three or four songs. “Seethe” has a killer bassline that grooves along with tambourine percussion, but its abrupt ending leaves much to be desired. “Turn the Key” starts out being underpinned by a shuffling Portishead-type beat that I really dig, but even with that refreshingly metallic riff, the mixing could’ve benefit from some added punch and vigor. And all other songs bar the final two just flat-out suck. Go back and listen to “16 Psyche” or something, not this flimsy attempt at goth-gone-Lilith Fair. Avoid.
