Chelsea Wolfe's second single from upcoming album Birth of Violence has arrived and with it comes a stylish black-and-white video showcasing the dark folk singer — and recent Revolver cover star — in her natural habitat among a wooded area while quirky vignettes featuring a cast of people engaging in behavior ranging from somewhat normal to moderately bizarre play out.
"American Darkness" continues Wolfe's current move toward a more stripped-down sound built on her voice, guitar and emotional swells created in the interplay of the two. Shucking off the metallic dirge of her previous effort, 2017's Hiss Spun, Wolfe delves further into not only the aural atmosphere of dark Americana, but uses this video as a vehicle to convey the aesthetic and everyday reality of its concepts and themes.
Wolfe calls the video, which was directed by Karlos Rene Ayala, an "expression of freedom and beautiful humans being themselves" that was initially an homage to scene from Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia but seen "through the lens of The Tarot."
"I've been reading tarot cards for myself for many years," Wolfe reveals, "and researching the symbolic expressions of the cards for this video made me want to dive even deeper."
Wolfe represents both The Fool and The High Priestess in the clip, which she explains was meant to "embody both the beginning of the journey, and the realization that the sacred knowledge I was seeking was inside me all along."
"We cast friends to play a few other tarot archetypes," she continues, "and Karlos' idea was to bring the symbols and signifiers into the contemporary; deconstructed, and made everyday - 'the magical and the unexceptional.' I loved that. At the same time, we really wanted to challenge the binary of the traditional tarot cards, and give them more diversity, which is something important that many cool artists and witches are doing. I'm such a fan of Karlos Rene Ayala as a writer, director, documentarian and friend, and have looked forward to making a video with him for a long time."
Birth of Violence, out September 13th, is available for pre-order at this location. Listen to her lead single from the album "Mother Road" and find a full list of tour dates here.
