Pain Is Beauty

Theme

Thematically, Pain Is Beauty is said to be largely about idealistic love. Though Wolfe has also stated "It’s not a conceptual album. There’s a lot of different things it’s about: it’s about ancestry, it’s about nature, it’s about tormented love and sort of overcoming the odds. There’s a lot of different themes on this album." According to Wolfe, the red dress she is wearing on the album cover represents volcanic lava. Regarding the album title, Wolfe admitted, "...there’s always gonna be situations that we go through that are really hard and we just have to kind of be strong, and if we get through to the other side, then we become wiser people and our lives become more beautiful."

Style

Consequence of Sound described the album's "addition of synths and sequenced beats create an expansive hybrid of her past three albums." The website also noted "distinctive strokes of seductive goth rock, psych folk, and post-punk"

Reception

The aggregate review site Metacritic assigned an average score of 82 to the album based on 17 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

In a positive review by Nate Chinen of The New York Times, the reviewer commented on the album's tone remarking, "...the attractive but suffocating atmosphere on Pain Is Beauty should be understood as precise aesthetic calculation", also stating, "Pain Is Beauty, her fourth album in three years, confirms her steadiness as a singer-songwriter of gothic intention, drawn to romantic fatalism and beautiful ruin." Comparing the album to previous records, Heather Phares of Allmusic expressed, "Wolfe opts for a fuller-fledged sound than she did on Unknown Rooms in a more tempered and eclectic way than Apokalypsis delivered", explaining, "With the help of Ben Chisholm and her other collaborators, she's free to go in virtually any direction she chooses, and she ends up choosing quite a few."

Several reviews have critiqued the album's cohesiveness; as Angel of Sputnikmusic notes, "While it's possible Pain Is Beauty would have benefited from some more time spent songwriting and fleshing out the overall direction of the album's sound, there's still more than enough impressive songs to make this a worthy addition to the Chelsea Wolfe catalog".

Personnel

Pain Is Beauty album personnel adapted from Allmusic.