My copy of Chelsea Wolfe's She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She arrived on Saturday and I managed to hold off listening to it until the precise criteria I insisted upon were met - Saturday night after recording the latest episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Murderboad - A True Detective Night Country Discussion, I placed the beautiful colored vinyl on the turntable in my office, smoked a quarter of a joint and laid out on the floor and let the sounds wash over me.
This one's an immediate shoo-in for my top ten list this year. It's both similar and completely unlike anything Ms. Wolfe has done previously; similar, because her voice is unmistakable; different in that there are a lot of what I can only call "Industrial Trip-Hop" elements in these songs.
I know, I know... it's not bad enough we subdivide music into oft-confusing subgenres, but now you're creating hybrids of those subgenres? Well... there's just no other way to say it.
Industrial is appropriate because alot of the songs have a mechanical feeling to their percussion or groove, Trip Hop because the closest thing I can compare of the arranging on this album to is Portishead or Massive Attack. I can split hairs all day long on the sound, but believe me, this is a spectacular piece of work from one of the most interesting artists working in music.
Watch:
I had the revelatory experience of watching Jennifer Reeder's 2019 Knives and Skin on Saturday night. Here's a trailer that I have vetted; it gives nothing away (also doesn't do this film any kind of justice, but you really can't encapsulate Knives and Skin in a trailer anymore than you can a Lynch film):
Ms. Reeder has been slowly moving up my radar ever since I watched 2020's Night's End hit Shudder back in the fall of 2022. I posted about her most recent film Perpetrator a few weeks ago, and that viewing, combined with this latest one, seals the deal: she's easily my latest "favorite directors." There's a moment in this trailer where the pull quote says, "Twin Peaks meets Donnie Darko." That's not exactly right, but it's not exactly wrong, either, and it's close enough to tell you why I like it so much and whether or not you have any hope of connecting with it. All I can say is K and I were absolutely mesmerized while watching.
Playlist:
Matt Cameron - Gory Scorch Cretins
David Bowie - Black Star
David Bowie - The Next Day
David Bowie - Outside
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Turnstile - Glow On
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom
Various - Learn to Relax: A Tribute to Jehu
Grace Jones - Warm Leatherette (single)
Daemien Frost - Corpus Demo
Donny Benét - Konichiwa (single)
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
The Veils - Total Depravity
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• VIII: Strength
• Four of Pentacles
• Knight of Wands
A lot of strength and foundation, which I feel like has been under assault in our house the last few days. Took K to the emergency room on Thursday night around midnight (she's fine), took our cat Sweetie to the pet urgent care on Saturday (we think she's fine), and something popped in my right knee that has left me in intermittent crippling pain since Saturday morning. All this, juxtaposed with this Pull, tells me we need to finally ante up and put our health back into the actively attending to column.
