Latest updates about “SPELLLING”

The edgy new heights of SPELLLING’s panoramic mysticism
The Line of Best Fit

Nevertheless, she describes Portrait as “a creative resurgence” and “a way to bridge the gap” between SPELLLING the artist and Chrystia the person: more forthright, more honest, less cloaked in mystery. The price of a small identity crisis in the process is one she’s come to terms with. Through asking the big questions like “Who am I?” and “What are my relationships?”, she was able to explore romance and intimacy “in new ways” that reflect on and address the changes in herself. She describes feeling “a big sense of relief” from coming to the end, as if the portrait’s completion marked a pivotal moment, a return to self. “There’s Tia and there’s SPELLLING,” she says firmly. “This album is much more personal, it’s much more Tia.”

SPELLLING — ‘Alibi’
Stereogum

Last month, SPELLLING announced her new album Portrait Of My Heart and released the gripping title track, which was one of our favorite songs of the week. Today, she’s back with another beautiful banger titled “Alibi.”

 

“Alibi” was originally a piano ballad, which is hard to imagine. Much like “Portrait Of My Heart,” “Alibi” is an exuberant, triumphant explosion of sound. Listen below.

The 5 Best Songs Of The Week
Stereogum

02 – SPELLLING – “Portrait Of My Heart”

SPELLLING has a knack for making music that sounds like it’s from another galaxy. “Portrait Of My Heart” is Chrystia Cabral’s newest otherworldly tune — taken from her just-announced new album of the same title — and it’s as fun as it is celestial. With enchanting strings and a cathartic chorus, “Portrait Of My Heart” serves as a cinematic, urgent anthem about alienation. It’s the best possible first preview of Portrait Of My Heart. –Danielle

SPELLLING – “Portrait Of My Heart”
Stereogum

For Portrait Of My Heart, Cabral assembled a band with Wyatt Overson on guitar, Patrick Shelley on drums, and Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass. It has Drew Vandenberg, Rob Bisel, and Psymun on production, and features special guests like Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi, Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory, and Zulu’s Braxton Marcellous. “Portrait Of My Heart” is a bewitching first taste; the song is a sweet indie-pop epic, even stronger paired with the Ambar Navarro-directed music video of Cabral dancing and singing in her bedroom, opening up a portal to another world. Fall under her spell below.

SPELLLING announces 2025 tour
Brooklyn Vegan

SPELLLING has announced her first tour since 2023. The “Portrait of My Heart” tour begins in San Francsico on April 4 and wraps up in Reno on May 19, stopping in Los Angeles, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, and more. According to a press release, she has “brand new songs” to perform, and you can see all dates below.

The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s so far
Paste Magazine

10. Spellling: The Turning Wheel (2021)

In the first half of a decade which saw the rise of many diaristic singer-songwriters, the indie world still struggles with whimsy or theatricality as concepts. Yet, Oakland art pop multi-instrumentalist Tia Cabral crafted one of the most ambitious, existential sleeper hits of the past five years by operating in a fantasy world of her own. Centered around her distinctive soprano cutting through lush, immaculately produced walls of harp, prog guitars, woodwinds and strings, The Turning Wheel is half paean to the natural world, half chilling depiction of isolation outside of it. From the pulsing lovesickness of “Always” to the icy synth showcase of “Queen of Wands” to the grandiose centerpiece of “Boys at School,” she carves out one mini-opera after the other, dazzling us one breath and haunting us the next. For all the critical darlings singing plaintive, poetic lines over acoustic guitars, few moments will still cut like Cabral’s delivery of “I’m meaner than you think, and I’m not afraid of how lonely it’s going to be” by the decade’s end. —Elise Soutar

SPELLLING played Elsewhere with Rahill (pics, video)
Brooklyn Vegan

SPELLLING released a new album, SPELLLING & The Mystery School, in August, a collection of reworked songs from throughout her discography, and she’s on a brief tour supporting it. She stopped in Brooklyn on Tuesday night (10/17) for a show at Elsewhere with Habibi leader Rahill, where she and her band delivered theatrical renditions of fan favorites, including “Little Deer,” “Always,” and otherwordly opus “Boys At School.” She ended the night with a couple of new songs. See attendee-taken video clips from her set, and pictures from the whole night below.

Album Review: SPELLLING & the Mystery School
Pitchfork
Chrystia Cabral gives her old highlights new studio arrangements, lending them the immediacy and clarity of live versions.

As SPELLLING, Chrystia Cabral dances the line between straightforward dream pop and aquatic, experimental electronic folk, creating music that both roils the soul and inspires whimsical daydreams. She expanded upon her tactile sound on 2021’s audacious The Turning Wheel, using rich instrumentation to animate her folkloric stories. Working with her touring band on new album SPELLLING & the Mystery School, Cabral reshapes previous album cuts with fresh arrangements, giving them the rhythmic, freeform feel of live versions. Her voice has never sounded better, even as some of the album makes you want to turn back to the delights of her charmingly shambling earlier work.

Spellling Spellling & the Mystery School Review: Unraveling Life’s Mysteries
Slant Magazine

With a vibrant kaleidoscope of sounds and ethereal ambiance, the singer brings both her fantasy world and reality to life.

Chrystia Cabral’s Spellling & the Mystery School is a collection of songs from throughout her career as Spellling, but with a twist, as each track has undergone a complete reimagination. The already eerie “Under the Sun,” from 2019’s Mazy Fly, has been masterfully reworked into an even eerier sci-fi ballad with an ominous string arrangement and an interlude punctuated by synth flashes, while “Phantom Farewell,” from 2017’s Pantheon of Me, beefs up some of the song’s original sonic distortions for a bigger, grander sound.

ALBUM OF THE DAY: SPELLLING, “SPELLLING & the Mystery School”
Bandcamp

Since the release of her 2017 debut Pantheon of Me, Tia Cabral, aka SPELLLING, has proven she can handily create expansive, fantastical worlds from the safety of her studio. But with each new record—including 2019’s synth-driven Mazy Fly and 2021’s orchestrally ambitious The Turning Wheel—Cabral has found new possibilities of expression on the stage. On her latest voyage, SPELLLING & The Mystery School, she looks back on her songbook and redraws the lines around some of her biggest crowd-pleasers.

The 10 Albums We’re Most Excited About in August
Paste Magazine

Oakland singer/songwriter and experimentalist SPELLLING is following up her 2021 masterpiece The Turning Wheel this August with SPELLLING & The Mystery School, a collection of tracks that surf between minimalism, glitchy percussive rhythm and hypnotic pianistic patterns. Full of mysticism and drama and haunting, evocative exploration, The gravity of SPELLLING’s songwriting is immense and, in turn, she makes left-field pop music that is both alien and ambitious. SPELLING & The Mystery School is on our radar because, after teaser singles “Cherry” and “Under the Sun,” it’s shaping up to be one of the best things she’s made—which says a great deal, given that The Turning Wheel was one of the very best records of 2021

SPELLLING shares new song, reveals Through The Looking Glass lineup
The Fader

Chrystia Cabral (SPELLLING) has shared the third single from her next album, SPELLLING & the Mystery School, due out August 25 via Sacred Bones. The record reintroduces the backing ensemble that joined Cabral for her most recent full-length, 2021’s The Turning Wheel, and comprises full-band re-recordings of tracks from across Cabral’s career: The original version of today’s track, “Hard To Please (Reprise),” comes from her 2019 breakout LP, Mazy Fly. And it follows the forthcoming record’s joint lead singles, “Cherry” (a rework of “Choke Cherry Horse” from 2017’s Pantheon of Me) and “Under The Sun,” another flipped Mazy Fly cut.

All The Best New Indie Music From This Week
Uproxx

Eerie artist Spellling — real name Chrystia Cabral — received recognition for her idiosyncratic 2021 masterwork The Turning Wheel, and these new songs “Cherry” and “Under The Sun” prove she hasn’t lost her haunted appeal. “Cherry” twinkles and broods and builds with unsettling whispers, growing into an evil anthem, sounding like a scene from a horror movie.

SPELLLING announces new album SPELLLING & the Mystery School
The Fader

“For the tour behind her excellent 2021 album The Turning Wheel, SPELLLING performed alongside a full band called the Mystery School, giving new dimensions to the experimental pop artist’s work. If you didn’t get a chance to see those shows, SPELLLING will soon bring the experience to a new studio album called SPELLLING & the Mystery School. Out August 25 via Sacred Bones, the album will feature re-recordings of songs from across Chrystia Cabral’s discography as SPELLLING.”

Spellling Magick
East Bay Express

“Ominously distorted minimal synth chords bang underneath a whooshing chant cranked on my best speakers while I think about how best to describe this music. The artist’s name is Spellling because that is what she does, cast spells.”

Creating A World Just for Her: The Charismatic Spellling comes to Songbyrd
District Fray

“So often, there will be an article out in the world that touts an artist as being groundbreaking or revolutionizing the music world around them. And while that acclaim is great and gives merit to a plethora of new and experimental artists, what really struck me about Oakland artist Spellling is how she doesn’t try to revolutionize this existing world. If anything, she works double time to invent her own.”

4 concerts to catch in the D.C. area over the next several days
The Washington Post

Spellling — real name: Chrystia “Tia” Cabral — knows how to sing in delicate whispers, but her elocution can contradict that daintiness. She likes to lean into the drama of her songs, elongating words by overemphasizing certain syllables — a playful antithesis to the articulation-isn’t-important attitude that prevails across so much of today’s pop music.

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