ALBUM REVIEW: Spellling - Portrait Of My Heart
This broomstick now features rocket launchers.
Listening to Spellling’s excellent 2021 album The Turning Wheel is akin to wandering through a magic forest, never knowing what mythic creatures you’ll find on your way to the witch hut where Chrystia Cabral (the project’s mastermind) resides. Its follow up charts new ground by flying above said forest on a rocket-powered broomstick. Cabral brings a new edge to her fantastical indie rock, with heavier guitars and crashing drums the standard on Portrait Of My Heart. Cabral’s signature croon is the thread that bridges this new intensity with her old mysticism. It’s a delicate act to balance, but Cabral’s sonic wizardry charts a solid path forward.
Almost immediately, this album shows the witch’s new edge. The album’s title track is an immediate blitz of percussion, guitars and Cabral’s pipes, all ringing with an fury unbeknownst to her music previously. Further tracks like “Love Ray Eyes” follow suit, casting Cabral as an alt-rock icon, a role she fills in well. Her voice is magnificent over all the noise, crushing it on an “Alibi” and its burbling synth notes. Things gets heaviest on “Drain”, where an instrumental Stone Temple Pilots would be proud of devolves into Cabral wailing over some powerful percussion. This new style is otherworldly in a new way but plenty full of intrigue to keep you listening.
At times, the flightpath of Portrait Of My Heart dips back into those forlorn forests below. Its middle section, from “Destiny Arrives” to “Mount Analogue”, is quite reminiscent of highlights from The Turning Wheel, with added guitar shredding of course. But they don’t compare to the beauty of an “Always” or “The Future”. This album is at its best when it commits fully to the 90’s grunge and alternative rock that so clearly inspire it, rendering these songs lost in the middle. Things are at their best when Cabral melds the old a new, tying these disparate worlds together with her always expressive voice. She can show off a variety of range the heavier or lighter “Drain” gets while making the indulgent grunge worship on “Satisfaction” tolerable.
Perhaps the best example of old and new coming together is “Sometimes”, a closer with the pace of a song from The Turning Wheel and the stylings of Portrait Of My Heart. It never raises above midtempo speed, but that allows Cabral to command the listener as guitars and synths coalesce like a recent M83 song. It’s an admirable effort to ramp up her sound here, turning a Spellling album into an unlikely event release. Even it if lacks the ethereal beauty of her best work, it’s still easy to be swept up into this supercharged new version of music’s sorceress supreme.
Verdict: 7.4/10
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