Catherine Elms Invites the Shadows to Dance in "Bring in the Wild"
In "Bring in the Wild", Welsh alternative visionary Catherine Elms doesn’t just sing—she excavates. This is not an album that skims the surface; it plunges headlong into the turbulent waters of the human psyche, fishing out the shadows we’ve been told to bury. Through twelve songs, she risks remaining with anger, desire, jealousy, and self-pity—not as foes to be vanquished, but as militant teachers in the bizarre art of self-awareness. The result is a filmic sequence in which beauty and chaos are entwined as the thorns and flowers of an overgrown garden, each thorn and flower necessary to the whole in order to live.
Spurred on by Jung's exhortation that the secrets of wholeness lie concealed in our shadows, Elms creates confession cathedral. "It's about learning to reconcile with the parts of myself that I used to keep at a distance," she says, "and learning to listen to what they have to say to me." These interior specters in her world are not shameful intrusions but fierce guides, propelling us toward the unnamed power of radical self-acceptance. Her singing is half silken and half serrated, splitting the burden of her revelations between the beauty of a ballerina and the toughened hardness of a survivor.
Musically, "Bring in the Wild" is lush but unflinching, somewhere between Kate Bush's theatrical mystique, Nick Cave's dark gravity, and Fiona Apple's raw, piano-smashing honesty. Early tracks "Medusa" and "Brutal Heart" gave the first sniff of this dark fragrance—mythic, dreamlike, and heavy with transformation. Now the whole album bursts into a world of chiaroscuro, where light and shadow entice one another in a slow, hypnotic waltz. Every track an entry, every line a candleflame in a darkened room you didn't know you carried inside.
Lauded by BBC Radio Wales as "brilliant" and a leading voice in alternative rock by Plastic Magazine, Elms is not only releasing music—she is building a sanctuary for the emotionally untamed. "Bring in the Wild" arrived globally on August 8th, with a larger 16-track edition on Bandcamp for those who desire the longer ride. And for the adventurers who dare to face the storm in flesh, her album launch at Porters, Cardiff on September 5th promises to be more of a ritual than concert—a night when shadows are not feared, but invited home.
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