Revisit other SputStaff Top 10 Lists:

Bjork | Bon Iver | Kanye West | Metallica | Mastodon | mewithoutYou

 My Chemical Romance | Queens of the Stone Age | The National | Say Anything 

Swans | Taylor Swift | Tim Hecker | Thrice

Foreword:

In celebration of the release of Chelsea Wolfe’s enrapturing new record She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She and the ongoing tour that, if you’re lucky, will bring her stunning show to a room near you, a group of staffers decided to gather around the fire, burn our clothes and howl our favorite Wolfe tunes under the light of a red moon.

As you know, Chelsea Wolfe’s body of work now spans seven albums (or eight depending on what you choose to include or not) and she has managed to consistently blend different styles into one single sound that is unmistakably hers. Whether it is the dark folk and occult Americana of Birth of Violence, the noisy bamboozling of electronic evil of Abyss or the indescribable gothic post everything of Pain is Beauty, Chelsea Wolfe is an artist that has grown from a seed of bedroom lo-fi recordings to branching out: making a collaboration project with hardcore legends Converge, soundtracks for different films and touring the world with unanimous success for her craft. Us here at the staffdom are very much fans of her music and hence we present you with our favorite tunes from the Californian songstress. – Dewinged

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Honorable Mentions:

15. Mer

14. Dragged Out

13. Tracks (Tall Bodies)

12. Sick

11. Scrape 

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Sputnik Staff’s Top 10 Chelsea Wolfe songs:

(10) “Maw”

from Abyss (2015)

In the context of Abyss’ tracklisting, “Maw” is a necessary palate cleanser. After sitting there and listening to three heavy-as-all-sin tracks pounding your senses black and blue, “Maw” is a welcoming reprieve that mends the wounds sustained thus far. The track isn’t perfidious; what we get here is a concise straight shooter – a feast of lush sounds: crisp piano notes, ethereal effects, Chelsea’s signature brand of pained, ghostly vocals, and, just to add a little bite to the piece, an amicable distorted guitar that chugs along with the gentle vibes being presented. As things go, “Maw” is a more traditional Wolfe track, but it’s still firmly planted in Abyss’ despairing world. – Simon K.

(9) “Deranged for Rock & Roll”

from Birth of Violence (2019)

“I’m deranged for rock and roll,” Wolfe proclaims immediately, and goddamn does she do what it says on the tin. Snarling electric guitars and thumping drums are constant presences, echoing with a severity that recalls drone and doom metal. It’s easily the heaviest track on Birth of Violence, but I don’t think that’s why it’s a fan favorite. Whereas that album’s characteristic looseness often did diddly-squat for its mellower passages, here it amplifies its caustic single-mindedness through the beautiful power of contrast. Her vocals, turn the repetitive chorus into a mantra, displaying absolute conviction as her fragile falsetto curls into a booming low register. By its end, “Deranged for Rock & Roll” is completely prayer-like, a pounding, breathtakingly single-minded evocation of the basest of rock’s impulses. – A.R.O.

(8) “Iron Moon”

from Abyss (2015)

There’s a reason Chelsea Wolfe’s Abyss is my favourite album from her. The doom-y, sludgy discord ultimately produces her most menacing experience to date, but the genius behind this abrasive sound is the way she integrates it with the benign characteristics of her previous works. “Iron Moon” is a fine example of this – opening up with that disgusting guitar passage that billows across the nightmarish soundscape, only to cut down to her vulnerable vocals and delicately approached walking guitar notes. From thereon, “Iron Moon” astutely displays the albums core duality of beauty and the grotesque, using the tried and true quiet-loud dynamic. There are so many peaks and troughs on here, and each one has the desired effect on your emotions, adding little things that will have a more potent result. The little horn that randomly plays for example; if anyone else was utilising a horn in this type of song, it would sound goofy as hell, but here it injects another hue of hopefulness to the despondent banquet of sounds. The peaks here are where the song operates best though, and it’s so cathartic getting three-quarters in and hearing that driving, epic crescendo with Chelsea spilling her vocal melodies all over the energised music, only for it to drop off a cliff at the end and give you a barrage of unsettling dissonances before fizzling out. “Carrion Flowers” will always be my favourite Wolfe track, just because of how evil it is, but goddamn is “Iron Moon” a close second, and arguably the greatest arrangement in her discography. – Simon K.

(7) “The Culling”

from Hiss Spun (2017)

I rarely listen to “The Culling”. It’s my favourite Chelsea Wolfe song. Frankly, it’s hard to pinpoint why it’s such a tough song to revisit: sure, it’s intense, but what Chelsea Wolfe song isn’t? Perhaps it’s because the track presents such a pivotal moment for Hiss Spun as a whole, but then again, what Hiss Spun track doesn’t? Ultimately, the twisted and somewhat ungraspable nature of “The Culling” feels like the perfect culmination of all things Wolfe. Vocals soar, synths haunt, guitars crash – but just a little bit more than anywhere else. – Jesper L.

(6) “Place in the Sun”

from She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (2024)

“Place in the Sun” is classic-sounding Chelsea Wolfe, yet it couldn’t have spawned anywhere other than She Reaches Out to She…, naturally weaving the album’s surging electronics with her cinematic folk bent leftover from Birth of Violence. Even more impressive, this glittering mood-piece stands nearly as well as a standalone song as it does holding an entire record together. No diss to its spectacular parent album, but the song’s lone clear-eyed chorus manages to ground the whole damn thing like a lightning rod, to the point that in its absence I imagine even naysayers bemoan the need for something of its exact ilk in the same place. In comparison to the beat-driven plod of the closer, “Dusk,” which begs for a climax loudly and often, here each sonic element bears the next—as widescreen as the song gets, the foundations are so strong that your immersion never breaks. While Wolfe has successfully gone for shock value in the past, her ability to blend creative spectacle with subtle songwriting chops in songs like these is what truly makes her discography stand out among her peers. – A.R.O.

(5) “Movie Screen”

from Apokalypsis (2010)

“Movie Screen” was the song that initially hooked me with Chelsea’s music. Its imprecise atmosphere of dithering beeps and wailing guitars are the perfect match for her haunting vocals that sound like a broken signal from the great beyond. Her single line, “Don’t you ever cross that bridge in your mind again/it’s like a movie screen,” is repeated endlessly, but its meaning always feels just out of reach. Is it a threat or warning? The answer seems to shift with the song as it ebbs and flows with various intensity, sometimes to a deafening yell, as if our messenger herself is figuring out the intentions along the way. While repeat listens are no more helpful in reaching a satisfying conclusion, the journey itself remains a compelling one even all these years later. – Dakota West Foss

(4) “16 Psyche”

from Hiss Spun (2017)

While Chelsea Wolfe at her most direct is rarely comfortable, there’s a sense of satisfaction to “16 Psyche” – it’s a song palpably at peace with itself, in spite of itself. During its four brief minutes, the Hiss Spun highlight manages to weave an uncharacteristically catchy hook out of the record’s main ingredients of doom and trauma, while retaining its perpetually intense and oppressive atmosphere. “16 Psyche” is a haunting love song rather than a lovingly haunting one: it is Wolfe casting her shadow as terrifyingly concretely as possible. – Jesper L.

(3) “Carrion Flowers”

from Abyss (2015)

The reason why “Carrion Flowers” is one of my favorite Chelsea Wolfe songs it’s very simple: It’s the very first song I heard from her. Opening her 2015 release, Abyss, “Carrion Flowers” is rather unwelcoming. The distorted bass samples that punch their way through are unpleasant, hostile, and then enters Chelsea singing that very particular and sinister melody that almost sounds like a warning, and one can’t help to think: “I shouldn’t be here”. With a bit of morbid curiosity, measured masochism, and a very tempered obsession with the unknown, I found myself listening to this song repeatedly for days, and every time I did, I felt like she was making parts of my psyche her territory. Her voice was like sweet poison, so intoxicating and bewitching that once it took hold of me it just became part of my system. It sounds hyperbolic but hearing “Carrion Flowers” and understanding her conversations with the Abyss marked a here and after in my music taste, and years after I let her in, I still reach out to “Carrion Flowers” from time to time, when I’m in need of immediate comfort. – Dewinged

(2) “The Waves Have Come”

from Pain is Beauty (2013)

One of the most compelling aspects about Chelsea as an artist is her willingness to change the size and scope of the darkness that she wrestles with. She has never and will never go bigger than “The Waves Have Come.” A towering eight-and-a-half minute behemoth, it’s a song with impossibly huge, apocalyptic stakes that effectively ends Pain is Beauty on the highest of notes. Much of the track’s effectiveness comes from its pitch-perfect pacing, beginning with nothing but an urgent piano and Chelsea’s sorrowful voice and ending in a climax that pulls away the fabric of the universe. The only time that the song diverts from its linear ascent is a brief pause in its first chorus, suggesting that Chelsea is perhaps trying one last time to not fully allow herself to feel the full weight of her despair, but that notion is quickly dispelled as one instrument after another show up to assist in the show-stopping finale like a Lord of the Rings Battle. The thundering drums, weeping strings, juuuust off-kilter vocal harmonies plod this song into an inevitable oblivion that simply must be heard to be believed, crafting what is perhaps the watershed moment in a discography full of high-marks. – Dakota West Foss

(1) “House of Metal”

from Pain is Beauty (2013)

Contrary to the entire concept of this list, Chelsea Wolfe is not a ‘best song’ kind of musician, and if her discography were to be mapped by its sweeping highlights, then “The Waves Have Come” would be sitting in this spot for the suite of larger-than-life factors expertly outlined overhead by Odal. Sorry – but! if there’s any single factor that cements her as a great artist (or a great gothic artist at least), it’s that the murky depths of her well of inspiration transcend any given statement she’s drawn from it. Translation: the lady has written a number of excellent songs (along with her share of smoke), but the reason we keep up with her is her uncanny knack for placing herself in the middle distance between ourselves and a Vast All-Consuming Void that so often seems so perilously close to encroaching on the comfort of our own precious listening space.