‘On her third album as Spellling, the Bay Area-based wizardess Chrystia Cabral employs the language of myth, magic and fancy to illuminate her reality as an empathic artist negotiating the realities of a world that’s multifariously on fire.’
‘Chrystia Cabral’s music encircles scenes of love and harmony with the threat of what lurks beyond their light: wolves at the edge of town, snapping at the gates. ‘
‘The orchestral title track from Tia Cabral’s third album as SPELLLING is plenty dreamy on its own, but the woodsy, self-directed video neatly rounds off her fairytale vision. ‘
‘The elegant collection of twelve songs builds on the bewitching synth-based sound she’s consistently refined since 2017’s Pantheon of Me, evolving in terms of lyrical complexity, sonic richness and conceptual depth. Born largely of the past year spent in isolation, these shifts all serve to signal the exponential potential of Cabral’s creative capabilities.’
‘The myth-skewing, Oakland-based artist is a chameleonic pop singer on her third album. Whimsical and urgent, these are fairy tales meant to wake us up.
‘Tia Cabral is a shapeshifter, with an eye and ear tilting toward the fantastical. In the visuals for her experimental pop project SPELLLING, she has appeared as an entity dipped in glittery goo, a rodeo princess, and a silver-faced harlequin. In her new short film for “Turning Wheel”—the title track of her enchanting new album—Cabral leads a gaggle of circus-chic misfits up a grassy knoll, a butterfly perched on her lavender cheek.’
‘The Turning Wheel is inspired by a multitude of genres, “from soul to psych to pop to noise” according to the record’s liner notes, which she knits together to gradually transport listeners from an airy high to a heavy low. It’s all done in a theatrical fashion, each scene connected by raw emotion.’
‘We loved “Little Deer,” the immutable lead single from Oakland avant-pop artist Spellling. Her new project is entirely self-produced and enlists the talents of 31 different musicians.’
‘Chrystia Cabral’s new album as SPELLLING was led by the single “Little Deer”—a song she called a “thesis track” of the LP because “it accomplishes this strong impression of theater that I was striving for with the album as a whole.” Learn more in the new feature “How Dracula, Tarot Cards, and Drinking in the Shower Inspired SPELLLING’s New Album.”’
‘The Turning Wheel, SPELLLING’s latest work, is exactly that—a mesmerizing, inventive, and infectious work sprawling in beautiful new directions from past acclaimed albums like Mazy Fly. The Sacred Bones release drops June 25 and deserves to be heard by the masses…’
‘Little Deer,” the first single from Cabral’s third album The Turning Wheel, proves what she’s capable of with a lot more room to stretch out and build upon the already captivating foundation she’s established. Dramatic piano chords ring out against a cinematic array of strings, with twinkly synths climbing toward starlight. It’s a stunner from the outset, but by the chorus it becomes truly breathtaking…’
‘An album of contrasts and juxtaposition, The Turning Wheel is an exploration of cycles and coefficients, its two halves comprising a set of bright orchestral pop against an underbelly of big-production gothic dirges.’
‘The Turning Wheel is Chrystia Cabral’s third album as SPELLLING, and it marks a turn toward lush orchestration (featuring no fewer than 31 collaborative musicians) and fanciful storytelling.’
‘As SPELLLING, Chrystia Cabral has been making darkly alluring experimental pop for years. The Turning Wheel maintains the darkness, the allure, and Cabral’s experimental touch, yet she has turned up the pop quotient significantly here.’
‘SPELLLING is releasing her new album, The Turning Wheel, in a couple weeks. We’ve heard two tracks from it so far, “Little Dear” and “Boys At School,” and today we’re getting the title track, which sounds like an elaborate ’60s pop fantasia with an appropriately theatrical video to match.’
‘In a press release Cabral explains that the new song “steps back into my younger self, my teenage self to voice my angst, desires and disillusionments. I knew when I created the main motif on the piano that it was striking something really raw and both delicate and fierce. The notes just immediately transported me to the era of my youth, of this time when you are really beginning to confront the mirror of yourself to the outside world.”
‘The Bay Area artist will share her third full-length via the Brooklyn-based label on June 25th. The Turning Wheel draws on synth pop, R&B and soul and sees Cabral co-producing and orchestrating an ensemble of 31 musicians, including banjo, harp, bassoon and trombone. Originally meant to be released last September, the twelve-track LP was delayed due to the pandemic and resulted in instrumentalists recording in socially-distanced and remote studio sessions.’
‘The Bay Area’s Chrystia Cabral is back with a new SPELLLING single, “Boys At School,” from her forthcoming album The Turning Wheel. This follows the lead single, “Little Dear,” which previewed a more upbeat, poppy direction. This new track starts as an eccentric piano ballad with haunting vocals and atmospheric synths, and gradually transforms into an intense indie rock anthem.’
‘On Wednesday, SPELLLING (aka Chrystia Cabral) announced the release of her third studio album, The Turning Wheel, due for release on June 25 via Sacred Bones after nearly a year of delays. Cabral also shared the album’s first track and lead single “Little Deer.” Check out the album’s tracklist and cover art here.’
‘From her home-recorded first album, 2017’s Pantheon of Me, up through 2019’s Sacred Bones debut Mazy Fly, the Bay Area artist Chrystia Cabral—aka SPELLLING—has entertained a fascination with the otherworldly. “SPELLLING is about showing people that there’s magic in every moment,” Cabral told Pitchfork at the time. With “Little Deer,” the sweeping first single from her forthcoming third album, The Turning Wheel, Cabral vividly melds the mythical with the familiar.’
“…Bay Area artist Chrystia Cabral has announced a new SPELLLING album: The Turning Wheel, which follows 2019’s Mazy Fly, is out June 25 via Sacred Bones. Listen to its lead single, “Little Deer”—a song inspired by Frida Kahlo’s iconic “Wounded Deer” painting—below…”
“”Little Deer,” the first single from The Turning Wheel, drops today, and continues Spellling’s eclectic, genre-defying streak wrapped in a warm and funky atmosphere…”
Chrystia Cabral has shared details of a new album as SPELLLING. The Bay Area-based artist will release The Turning Wheel on June 25 through Sacred Bones Records.
The 12-song The Turning Wheel follows SPELLLING’s acclaimed 2019 LP Mazy Fly, which Exclaim! gave a 9/10 score.
Having been quoted as drawing inspirations “from messages in her dreams,” Chrystia Cabral, who goes by SPELLLING, conjures forth a very cerebral soundscape; one filled with flashes of light shining out from the shadowy scene, every inch of which she has carefully crafted.
There’s a song on SPELLLING’s debut, 2017’s Pantheon of Me, where the vocalist and musician Tia Cabral moans over a high-pitched, murderous guitar refrain, one that sounds like tiny gremlins fiending for blood: “I’m not going back to him.” She repeats herself, slightly changing the plea, as layers of ghostly vocals spill over each other. “I’m not going back to the grave.” Again, more desperate than before, she wails, “I’m not going back to the grave.”
As SPELLLING, Cabral makes music that’s basically impossible to categorize. She plays around with all sorts of dark and vaporous sounds: gothed-out horror-movie synth textures, new-wave bloop-riffs, queasy ambient sputters, bluesy squelches, creeped-out smooth-jazz saxophones, pillowy ’80s-R&B bass-riffs, spindly indie-rock guitar-murmurs. As a singer, Cabral is rooted in soul, and she’s capable of bending notes with astonishing force and conviction.
The Bay Area artist talks about dressing up like magical characters, obsessing over creepy carnivals, and embracing her uniqueness in this Rising interview.
