Chelsea Wolfe live review: a perfectly gothic Halloween
When you hit adulthood, the question of what to do on Halloween becomes more complicated. It has been five years since I last decided to go clubbing on October 31st — something that I would recommend to no one. Crammed into a sweaty club full of students, I thought I was doing uni life right, but what I didn’t consider was that I was doing Halloween all wrong.
The scariest part of the night became trying to get an Uber to accept our ride, dodging the advances of weird guys, and losing my friends in a sea of costumes bought last-minute from the party shop in town. Since then, my Halloweens have been spent at house parties full of friends, watching horror movies, or at gigs, allowing me the chance to actually enjoy the occasion for what it is: one of the most fun nights of the year.
So, when it was announced that Chelsea Wolfe – who blends dark folk, metal, and everything in between into her murky musical world – would be playing a Halloween show in Leeds, I knew my plans were sorted. When I arrived at the venue, Leeds Irish Centre, I was greeted by a crowd dressed in black outfits, and it was hard to tell who was wearing a costume and who was just in their normal gothic garb.
Goths stood among your usual Radio 6 listening gig-goers, and I couldn’t help feeling a little out of place, dressed in an outfit vaguely inspired by one of my favourite horror protagonists, Elaine from the 60s-inspired movie The Love Witch. Wearing a black boat neck mini dress and knee-high boots, at least I kept in theme with the unofficial dark dress code that everyone had gleefully adhered to.
Many of the crowd members looked as though they had survived teenage emo phases (not something I can say I ever dabbled in), and for a moment, I wondered if I had actually made the right Halloween plan. Yet, as soon as Wolfe stepped out on the stage, the fog machine working overtime, the atmosphere I was craving was instantly established. Ominous synths and raucous guitars struck down over the audience like a thunderstorm, with Wolfe transporting us to a world of mystery and drama.
She mainly performed songs from her newest album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches To She, starting with the record’s opener, ‘Whispers in the Echo Chamber’. The fact that Wolfe was chosen to score Ti West’s slasher X is unsurprising – every song felt like it had been lifted from a horror movie, with the musician and her band giving an enveloping performance that moved between intense moments imitating feelings of terror and paranoia, while others were more melancholic.
Since it was Halloween, Wolfe asked us to take a minute to remember our ancestors before launching into ‘The Culling’, a song from her 2017 album Hiss Spun. She also played the song ‘16 Psyche’ from the same record, a beautifully heavy cut that I was particularly excited to hear. The penultimate song of the night was another highlight: an acoustic rendition of ‘The Liminal’, which left everyone in the room stunned into silence.
Crafting a gothic and haunting atmosphere, Wolfe appeared like a supernatural being in front of us. What could’ve been better on the scariest night of the year?
