Every SPELLLING Album Is Even Better Than the Last
‘Portrait of My Heart,’ out tomorrow, is simultaneously Chrystia Cabral’s most rock-indented and accessible LP yet.
WHY SHE’S HERE: Chrystia Cabral has been making excellent pop music of various stripes for like a decade now
WHAT’S THE VIBE: Winkingly spooky, big guitars, bigger vocal affect
START HERE BUT ALSO KEEP READING: “Alibi,” “Drain,” “Love Ray Eyes”
In a past interview I can’t quite find because the internet is a mess, SPELLLING, a.k.a. the avant-pop musician Chrystia Cabral, said that the kids she teaches asked her if she was famous when they found out she’s a musician, and I find that so adorable. Kids are limitlessly imaginative and unafraid to fully love what they love, which are exactly the qualities that define Cabral’s songwriting and production. And also, it’s really cute that kids are so innocent that they’d think everyone who makes music is famous, because SPELLLING’s music has often been…not quite right for the mainstream or even certain ~indie~ listeners. I could imagine some adults — who are less imaginative and more prone to shame due to the dozens of societal stigmas hanging over all our heads, as well as the energy work zaps out of us all — struggling to let their guard down when listening to Cabral’s songs. Maybe they’d even dismiss her music as kooky or pretentious. Yes, music critics have long loved her work, but I still feel like SPELLLING is a well-kept secret among a small crowd of more open-minded listeners.
Portrait of My Heart, Cabral’s fourth album, out tomorrow (March 28), has tons of potential to vastly broaden her reach. It’s her most accessible and, in my opinion, best LP to date, though I’ve said the latter about every SPELLLING album upon its release because Cabral is just that good. I mean “accessible” in every sense of the word: So often, when an artist takes a more broadly appealing approach, this shift is audible solely in their music, but Portrait of My Heart is also way more accessible lyrically. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Cabral’s fairytale-like “Emperor with an Egg” from 2021’s fantastical, Kate Bush-esque The Turning Wheel and the vaguely sci-fi narrative of “Under the Sun” from 2019’s lo-fi-ish, Lynchian Mazy Fly. It’s just that there’s something so refreshing about hearing Cabral sing in plain language about, well, her heart. That she does it over straight-up rock music (somewhat of a continuation from 2023’s SPELLLING & the Mystery School, a collection of rerecorded songs from her first three albums) and sometimes verges on metal while retaining her playful vocal mannerisms and winkingly fanciful persona is even better.
If you’re wondering how an album steeped in rock could be an artist’s most accessible yet, maybe you haven’t heard of Turnstile. In the back half of 2021, all that anyone in rock music could talk about was that band’s album GLOW ON, on which the group ventured out from its hardcore roots toward a life-affirming, melodic pop sound as fit for Riot Fest as for Madison Square Garden. Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory plays on Portrait of My Heart’s “Alibi,” a ferocious yet undeniably fun song about the irrepressible joy of escaping a toxic relationship. The slightly silly yet totally earnest wails Cabral mastered on The Turning Wheel emerge as the verses transition into the chorus (“and I won’t / take you back / this time! / caught up in your alibi!”), ensuring that this potentially gloomy subject matter instead manifests as a riotous banger fueled by McCrory’s sludgy yet bright guitars. On Portrait of My Heart, Cabral’s newfound baring of her soul and embracing of hooky rock music are massively successful precisely because everything special she’s cultivated on past releases remains on the page.
The wolf-like howls and witchy mystique on “Keep It Alive,” the ghostly upper register vocals of “Drain” (which features another hardcore great, Braxton Marcellous of the Black powerviolence band Zulu, on guitars): These are SPELLLING songs through and through even as Cabral embraces distorted guitars and upfront lyrics. She hints at her musical interests from the jump with a clear ‘90s rock reference that, though the album’s first, certainly isn’t its last. “I don’t belong here!” she sings fervently on “Portrait of My Heart,” which is also the final line to the chorus of “Creep” by Radiohead, a band I hope I never have to mention in here again because yikes but I will probably have to mention again given their omnipresent influence. For Cabral to nod to an alt-rock classic on the album’s first track as she moves into a more guitar-oriented sound is telling, as is the fact that she named the album after this song. Also telling: Rob Bisel, one of SZA’s main co-producers, is Cabral’s co-producer on this track (Drew Vanderberg, who co-produced much of The Turning Wheel, also co-produced most of Portrait of My Heart). It’s clear that Cabral’s grandest pop ambitions are inextricable from her rock quest.
The ‘90s references emerge after the title track too. The guitars and vocal melody on “Drain” strongly evoke Stone Temple Pilots’ “Plush,” a 1993 alt-rock song that topped the U.S. Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart. (Listening back to that song now for the first time since my infinitely regrettable teenage masc-rock phase, wow it is deeply not for me anymore, but RIP Scott Weiland.) Portrait’s final track is a cover of “Sometimes” from My Bloody Valentine’s landmark 1991 shoegaze album Loveless, and I already loved that song and LP despite never having really understood their lyrics — the haze is part of the MBV experience. Cabral, though, sings “Sometimes” with complete clarity in her usual enticing vocal style, with some background chants that land in the perfect middle ground between whimsical and entirely unironic. She bridges rock gruffness with melodies you can nestle into throughout Portrait; that she finds new warmth and tenderness in “Sometimes,” a song that’s already both, speaks to how stunning her approach is.
Admittedly, there’s a bit of SPELLLING’s previous era in Portrait. “Destiny Arrives” and “Mount Analogue” (a duet with, of all people, the quirky genre-hopper Toro y Moi) both evoke The Turning Wheel’s sound, though these songs’ direct tales about the complexities of love would be out of place on that album. Whereas “Destiny” and “Mount” are about the joy and confusion of following someone into new romantic terrain, “Love Ray Eyes,” which reaches a mountainous climax of overdriven power chords and gleaming synths, is simply about head-over-heels longing: Her portrait of her heart is taken at every angle from apprehensive to ecstatic. Its fleshed-out depiction of its artist makes her more approachable than ever before.
Please read this New York Times opinion piece about Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest being the greatest threat to free speech since the Red Scare. I’m not alone in feeling that Khalil’s detention and the circumstances around it — in particular, the fact that he is not being charged with a crime and that it is extraordinarily rare for one’s green card to be revoked — portend the beginning of a major suppression of basic human rights that we urgently need to figure out how to fight back against. And we’ve already lost so many of our rights as it is. Plus, if even the New York Times is allowing its opinion writers to express outrage against the detention of pro-Palestinian student protestors, the tides are clearly shifting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Max Freedman launched the LGBTQ+ music newsletter Lavender Sound in January 2025 to create an online writing community by and for LGBTQ+ people about LGBTQ+ music. They also interview artists for The Creative Independent, which is their favorite website (they really want you to read their Jaboukie Young-White interview), and they’ve previously contributed music criticism to Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, and Paste. Their pronouns are whatever float your boat ⛴️💜