''The Grime and the Glow'' is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter

Chelsea Wolfe Chelsea Joy Wolfe (born November 14, 1983) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Her work has blended elements of gothic rock, doom metal, and folk music. Raised in Northern California with a country musician father, Wolfe began writin ...

. It was released on December 28, 2010. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics, with Wolfe drawing comparisons to

PJ Harvey Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments. Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined loca ...

Writing and composition

Background

In 2006 Wolfe composed an album, titled ''Mistake in Parting'', though it was never officially released. About the album, Wolfe said: "I was 21 years old and wrote a shitty singer-songwriter breakup album. I didn't even really want to be a musician back then, but a lot of my friends were like 'let's do this, I've got some producer friends' and they helped me make this over-produced, terrible record... I sort of took a break from music for a while since I wasn't happy with what I was making". Wolfe later commented that she scrapped the album largely because it was written about personal events in her life: "I was writing really personal stuff about my own life, and I didn't feel comfortable at all... I didn't want

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to be so much about myself, and I just had to find a new perspective". After stepping away from the music she had made in her younger years, in the summer of 2009, Chelsea Wolfe embarked on a European tour with a group of performance artists, playing in unusual spaces, including cathedrals, basements, and old nuclear plants for whoever would listen. After she returned home, she started over her approach to making music and began writing and recording with her old Tascam 488 8-track recorder, and those recordings would eventually lead to ''The Grime and The Glow''. Wolfe stated that she began writing songs when she was 9 years old but it was not until she became 25 when she decided to release her music. The tracks "Bounce House Demons" and "Moses" were reworked for Wolfe's second studio album '' Apokalypsis'' (2011), with the former being renamed "Demons".

Critical reception

''The Grime and the Glow'' received generally positive reviews from music critics.

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's Chris Parks described the album to have "an

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...

, lo-fidelity sound that showcased her vocal prowess." Heather Phares of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

felt that the ''The Grime and the Glow'' "revealed all

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could do with the simplest of tools" and made comparisons to "''

White Chalk ''White Chalk'' is the seventh studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 on Island Records. Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her '' ...

''-era

in its desolate

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studies in beauty, noise, and terror." John Sant for ''Fine Print Magazine'' also compared her to Harvey but stated that "Wolfe is more in step with

Nick Cave Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...

's menacing spiritualism and

Chris Goss Christopher Ryan Goss (born August 17, 1958) is an American record producer and musician. Best known for producing records for Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, he is regarded as an important figure in the development of stoner rock and deser ...

' trademark empty-desert

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." Andrew Sacher of ''

BrooklynVegan ''BrooklynVegan'' is an American online music magazine founded in 2004 by David Levine. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, United States and originally focused on vegan food and the music community in and around New York City, ...

'' characterized the album as "a self-recorded gem which successfully blends dark folk,

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and

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-esque ethereality." In a ''Spectrum Culture'' review made for ''The Grime and the Glow''s reissue, Nathan Stevens expressed that the record was "recorded in such a dismal and dirty way that it could have been made decades ago," adding that this "lends the album power though."

Track listing

Personnel

*Chelsea Wolfe – Vocals, guitar, production *Ben Chisholm – piano (6, 12) *Kevin Dockter – lead guitar (1, 8) *Drew Walker – drums (1, 8) *Addison Quarles – bass guitar (1, 8)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grime and the Glow, The 2010 debut albums Chelsea Wolfe albums