The tension in these songs provide the structure for the dramatic arc of ‘The Turning Wheel’, which reaches its literary climax on “Revolution”. Moving into the second half of the record, marked by the sprawling opus “Boys at School”, the story gets darker, with an element of danger creeping in on the subsequent tracks “Legacy” and “Queen of Wands”. As you move through the album, it feels as though you are a child turning the pages of a story book, where the plot is sometimes lost, but you sit there transfixed by the magical images in front of you. The opening track “Little Deer” feels like sitting at the feet of a grand stage, and as SPELLLING’s incoming voice haunts the air, there’s the distinct thrill of waiting for the oracle to appear. The fantastical lyricism lends itself to these grand, trotting orchestral breaks SPELLLING peppers throughout the record. The orchestration, such as on the track “Emperor with an Egg”, coax the listener into a mystical world where, “He’s a bird, he’s a king, He can swim with his wings, Like an arrow”. There’s something profoundly theatrical about this record. What results is an album that feels profoundly grounded whereas SPELLLING’s previous albums felt like she was soaring into the heavens, ‘The Turning Wheel’ puts Cabral’s feet firmly on the ground where she can let her roots grow. ‘The Turning Wheel’ is a new endeavor for SPELLLING, enlisting a full-scale orchestra to provide the base for her epic. Her previous two albums ‘Mazy Fly’ (2019) and ‘Pantheon of Me’ (2017) leaned on a strong foundation of swirling synths as SPELLLING crafted her fairytale-like vignettes. SPELLLING, aka Oakland-based musician/artist Tia Cabral, has built a musical career masterfully intertwining electronica, soul, and pop. Artists like Kate Bush and Björk paved the way for a new generation of creatives, who use the formulaic structure of traditional pop music to execute some of the most ambitious sonic landscapes ever created. In my opinion, the best experimental pop music pushes the limits of what we dare to consider “pop” music, with all of its semantic and cultural baggage. Experimental pop has always been a genre that has fascinated me, mixing the conventional with the far-out, the familiar with the peculiar.
0 kommentar(er)
