Happy new year and welcome to the New Year's Day edition of ROTW. This week, the Randomizer serves up Chelsea Wolfe's Live at Roadburn. This set was recorded in 2012, and the album was released in 2018. This gorgeous violet disc is the copy I'll be playing. Roadburn is a festival started up in 1999, in Tilburg, Netherlands. I've never been but I've read about it here and there. I think they mainly focus on metal/doom/heavy rock. Chelsea Wolfe is a perfect fit.
Opening up the album with Halfsleeper pretty much sets the tone for this set. Haunting and heavy. The 8 tracks pull from her first couple albums, The Grime and The Glow (2010) and Apokalypsis (2011). Movie Screen and Demons feel like they could soundtrack a horror film about an 18th century coven of witches. Side 2 feels a little heavier with more full band action on Noorus, Moses and Pale on Pale. This lady fucking brings the darkness, especially in her live shows. I first became aware of her with the release of her third album, Pain is Beauty, and I got to see her on that tour. Just mesmerizing. And I've seen her a few times since then. Comparisons to PJ Harvey and Nick Cave are valid, but it also feels like she is her own thing and following her own North Star. I would love to hear her destroying covers of, say, To Bring You My Love (PJ) and Stagger Lee (Cave). In any case, I spent the past year picking up the Chelsea records I didn't have, and I'm so glad this one came up. Very recommended and really, you couldn't go wrong picking up any album of hers.
EDIT: Actually, I just remembered that she covered Nick Cave's I Let Love In many years ago and it's really fucking good.