(2017) Spellling - Pantheon of Me      


Review:
Oakland artist Tia Cabral calls herself Spellling, as in the bewitching verb. She uses a loop pedal and minimal instrumentation (guitar, synth, her enchanting voice) to create a billowing, diffuse atmosphere; her fragments of pop are incantations. Cabral has said that she began learning to produce her own music just last year, and there is accordingly a thrilling sense of exploration to her debut LP, Pantheon of Me, released in September. Listening to it feels like searching through a pitch-black house for secret performances that slowly reveal their process. Its nonlinear textures recall Geidi Primes-era Grimes, with dashes of New Weird American mysticism and divine soul. “Walk Up to Your House,” the album’s opener, builds cautiously into its drifting hook, perhaps to match the tentative decision she sings about. Cabral’s vocals are its truest rhythm—at turns ecstatic and gothic, raw and fluttering, a strong and human thread in her spectral patchwork. Apart from music, Cabral is also a visual artist, and she has commented on being especially concerned with the moods, shapes, and tactility of sound. “I like to hear flaws a lot,” she says. “I like to hear fragility, and songs that feel vulnerable.” This logic is at the core of Pantheon of Me, which is surely among the most overlooked debuts this calendar year. — By Jenn Pelly @ pitchfork


****   


Oakland’s Tia Cabral, aka Spellling, wrote and recorded Pantheon of Me by herself. It’s a truly stunning record, building on last year’s EP of the same name to create a unique and imaginative pop vision. Pantheon of Me is full of space, subtlety, texture, and detail. Cabral’s looped guitar delicately spirals through each composition, and her voice (also often looped and layered) is intimate and possessed of both clarity and soul, though she barely even utilizes its potential dynamics. (The fact that she’s able to achieve the emotional range she does without pushing her voice hard is one of the things that makes this record such an achievement. She has the intense control of ritual practice.) Some tracks are more on the experimental side of things (“Choke Cherry Horse,” “Nine of Nights”), and some bend more forcefully toward R&B (“They Start the Dance”) or darkwave (“Place Without a Form”), but despite the varied palette of styles none sound out of place. There’s a clear emotional throughline, too: uncertainty, seeking, reaching out with one hand before you in the dark, and one hand reaching back into collective history for your ancestral anchors. Cabral has it, from her careful sense of composition to her charismatic presence to her ability to communicate with her music straight through to the listener’s heart. — By Jes Skolnik @ daily.bandcamp.com


   


Track List:
01 - Walk Up to Your House
02 - Choke Cherry Horse
03 - Phantom Farewell
04 - Interior World
05 - Live with Me
06 - They Start the Dance
07 - Nine of Nights
08 - Bolt from the Blue
09 - Higher Ground
10 - Blue (American Dream)
11 - Place Without a Form
12 - Black Wax
13 - Lift Your Arms Around


Media Report:
Genre: art pop, electronic, R&B
Country: Oakland, California, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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