“Hello London you’re so beautiful. Thank you for being here.” Yes, we all look pretty good tonight, it has to be said, as I stand amidst this crowd of dapper, stylish goths. We’ve all tried very hard, Queen Chels; thanks for noticing. Combine this stygian sea of fans with the baroque, Italianate glamour of Koko, and you have the perfect atmosphere for the husky gloom of Chelsea Wolfe’s music.
It’s only been six months since Chelsea Wolfe last played London, selling out Heaven back in April 2024: a testament to her continual rise in popularity. Headlining another sold-out show tonight at Koko – Camden’s grandest venue – as part of her Autumn EU/UK tour, seems to reinforce her reputation as the Queen of the goth underground, as well as to suggest a step further into the mainstream. Performing the entirety of her latest album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, alongside versions of older material, Chelsea’s set tonight seems designed to work perfectly in a big club environment, with an expansive hall and a killer PA, and also to showcase the extent to which her sound has developed over the last decade.
Choosing Mary Jane Dunphe, a poet and performer from New York, for support further demonstrates Chelsea’s broad appeal. Mary takes to the stage wearing white knee pads that match her Strat. Following a song from Midwife (Denver singer Madeline Johnston) from the PA is very apt for Mary, the latter’s guitar pops over backing beats reminiscent of the former’s languid dreamscapes in both tone and form. So far, so apt for Chelsea. But the remainder of Mary’s set focusses on big-energy quirky art pop, with throbbing bass, trippy beats and exuberant dance moves – not the most obvious support choice for Chelsea’s somewhat restrained melancholia. Yet Mary’s set works, those beats providing a similar vibe to some of the more trip-hop-oriented material from She Reaches Out To She. My favourite parts are the two-note Breeders-style basslines and broken beats, with touches of Bjork’s genius idiosyncrasies in the vocal delivery. While the sound system is incredible, there are points when the backing threatens to overwhelm her vocal, although I’m very close to the PA at this stage.
Mary Jane Dunphe. Photo: Talie Rose Eigeland
I’ll be honest in admitting that I’m unlikely to listen to Mary’s music at home, and there’s something I find a little contrived about this style of dancing. But Mary certainly gives it her all, making the huge stage seem small with her unrelenting energy. At the mic, she’s flexing her muscles, arms crossed over chest; on its periphery, she’s jumping stars, running circles, down on her haunches, and spinning vertiginous spirals. She’s “very lucky and very appreciative” for the opportunity, and I have no doubt – judging by the warm response from this unlikely crowd – that she will be asked to return to London again soon.
Bathed in blue light, Chelsea Wolfe herself graces the stage with her presence as her band play eerie album-opener ‘Whispers from the Echo Chamber’, the jerky beats sounding massive when they kick in. She Reaches Out To She is Chelsea’s most densely produced album, with an industrial metal and electronic feel, and building layers of atmospheric sounds even more than on previous releases. All of this comes through very clearly indeed in the live setting, with every detail conveyed sharply and powerfully. In the ten or so years I’ve been seeing Chelsea perform live, this feels like a big step in terms of live production, delivered with a sense of confidence, panache and power.
Chelsea Wolfe. Photo: Talie Rose Eigeland
While she has incorporated electronic music into her sound for years, this feels like the first time it becomes the predominant flavour: long-term collaborator Ben Chisholm (pulling off a porno-tache tonight) filling a lot of the sonic space with creeping synth bass, noisy samples, and careful arrangements of whooshing and rushing ambience. Possibly my favourite moments is a new version of ‘Feral Love’ from 2013, one of the oldest tracks aired tonight, which exaggerates the pulsing electronica of the original, is sung more forcefully, and rendered into a nasty club-banger, full of glitching, anarchic noise. And I have a lump in my throat as she carefully weaves haunting lines from The Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ into ‘Tunnel Lights’.
The guitar takes a back seat these days, with Bryan Tulao tending towards carefully articulated lead-oriented parts on the recent material, and without Chelsea strapping on her Gibson electro-acoustic for the grittier riffs, as we are used to. While the sound is perhaps clearer overall than it used to be – helped by the Koko sound system – I wouldn’t say it’s cleaner; in many ways, it’s just as dirty and heavy as it always has been. Jess Gowry, ever the metal drummer, is a key factor here, who replaced Dylan Fujioka’s nimble, jazzy stylings in 2017 with her hard-hitting delivery, forcefully accentuating each huge beat.
As a performer who has spoken openly about coping with stage-fright in the past, Chelsea has never moved a great deal on stage, allowing her other band members to create a sense of energy. While she stays close to the mic tonight, she certainly has presence: obviously closer to the audience than her band (all positioned further to the back), she seems relaxed, using her hands expressively in natural and emotive gestures, in sync with the music, as if forcing the notes out and shaping them physically. After ‘Everything Turns Blue’ and ‘House of Self-Undoing’, she steps closer, exploring the stage a little, looking confident and happy if still characteristically reserved.
Chelsea Wolfe. Photo: Talie Rose Eigeland
I’ve heard uninitiated folks at Chelsea’s previous shows read her reserve as arrogance, but that’s clearly not the case as she breaks her intense gaze on the crowd to giggle as she starts to play the wrong song, shrugging off her mistake: “We’ll play ‘After the Fall’, then that one.” One of two songs from Abyss (2016) reminds us how heavy and how deep Chelsea’s material can go, how intense the emptions she can conjure, and much of a banshee wail she can unleash when the song calls for it.
And when she emerges alone with her acoustic for a few tracks, that heaviness and emotivity continues, with the anthemic Americana of ‘The Mother Road’, sweeping us off along dusty, dreamy highways and into ‘Flatlands’, while Ben and Bryan recreate acoustic strings through synth and eBow in rousing harmony. Its moments like these that showcase the strength of Chelsea’s song-writing as well as the quality of her voice, which seems somewhat unique in her ability to forcefully project herself whilst sounding laidback, reserved, airy.
Chelsea Wolfe. Photo: Talie Rose Eigeland
For those still seeking the undeniably metal material that Chelsea achieved on some of her previous releases, tonight’s show concludes with the dirty, bass-rushing darkness of ‘Carrion Flowers’: the perfect title for a track which combines pounding heaviness and soaring ethereality into a kind of rotten beauty.
Tonight brought together style, power, beauty and darkness to showcase Chelsea Wolfe and her band as artists with a distinct yet diverse sound, at the very pinnacle of their powers.
