Ahead of releasing her Birth of Violence album this September, Chelsea Wolfe has shared a second new song from the effort.
Titled "American Darkness," Wolfe's latest follows previously shared album opener "The Mother Road" and arrives alongside a video directed by Karlos Rene Ayala.
Described by Wolfe as an "expression of freedom and beautiful humans being themselves," she explained that Ayala's visuals first began as homage to a scene in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia where the characters sing along to Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," though she sought to have their version "explored through the lens of the Tarot."
In a statment, Wolfe elaborated further:
I've been reading tarot cards for myself for many years, and researching the symbolic expressions of the cards for this video made me want to dive even deeper. To represent that, I played both The Fool and The High Priestess cards in the video, 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, 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.
Watch the video for "American Darkness" below.
Birth of Violence arrives September 13 through Sargent House. Wolfe will also hit Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on an acoustic tour later this year.
Titled "American Darkness," Wolfe's latest follows previously shared album opener "The Mother Road" and arrives alongside a video directed by Karlos Rene Ayala.
Described by Wolfe as an "expression of freedom and beautiful humans being themselves," she explained that Ayala's visuals first began as homage to a scene in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia where the characters sing along to Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," though she sought to have their version "explored through the lens of the Tarot."
In a statment, Wolfe elaborated further:
I've been reading tarot cards for myself for many years, and researching the symbolic expressions of the cards for this video made me want to dive even deeper. To represent that, I played both The Fool and The High Priestess cards in the video, 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, 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.
Watch the video for "American Darkness" below.
Birth of Violence arrives September 13 through Sargent House. Wolfe will also hit Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on an acoustic tour later this year.
