Spun

Album: Hiss Spun (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Over a lurching riff provided by longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm and Queens of the Stone Age's Troy Van Leeuwen, Chelsea Wolfe croons serves sultry lyrics about longing and desire. HMV.com asked Wolfe how she hooked up with the QOTSA guitarist. She replied:

    "We opened for a couple tours with Queens Of The Stone Age in 2014 and on one of the first nights Troy came backstage and started making us mixed drinks. I knew we'd get along then! He's also a great person and him and Ben and I have remained friends over the years. As the first few songs for Hiss Spun came together, I had the idea to ask Troy to play lead guitar on them. I knew he'd understand the kind of twisted emotions the songs needed and he totally did."
  • This is the opening track of Chelsea Wolfe's sixth album Hiss Spun. Asked at what stage she decided on Hiss Spun for the title, Wolfe replied:

    "I was struggling with the name for a long time actually. I knew I wanted it to be something cyclical or circular and had decided on Spun, but it felt like something was missing. There were all these keywords throughout the album; small words with big meanings that pulled everything together: vex, hiss, swarm, spun, scrape.

    There are a lot of nods on the album to my affinity for white noise as well, and for me, the word "hiss" represented that, this comforting white noise that exists in all of nature. So I put the two words together to create a new abstract meaning. Hiss is the life force, and Spun is the hangover and the withdrawals."

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