Album Review: SPELLLING - Portrait Of My Heart
- Lammbi
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
The slow steps to her extroverted side, SPELLLING opens up greatly on ‘Portrait Of My Heart’. Pulling upon Alternative Rock melodies that may be straightforward, but allows Chrystia Cabral's sense of yearning to punch through more than it doesn’t.
One thing that makes love so impactful is how its yearning presence moves and changes people when they embrace it, able to push them toward growing into their confident selves. It’s a part of realizing what it can do to their life as they keep on trudging forward, where the things that they’re afraid of seeking out can be something actually worth looking into and where it opens up the opportunities that could give more benefits to their overall outlook more than it does harm them. SPELLLING certainly knows this feeling as she moves from album to album, moving from the mystique of her last record, ‘The Turning Wheel’, and now into the groundedness of ‘Portrait Of My Heart’.
‘Portrait Of My Heart’ embeds itself into newer territory for SPELLLING, where she now pulls more inspirations from various sectors of rock music and finds herself opening up amidst all of the textured polish of these pop rock and alternative rock touchpoints. Bringing more sharpness to her vocals, pulling more collaborators and producers (Toro Y Moi, Patrick McCrory, Braxton Marcellous, Rob Bisel, Psymun) into the mix, and keeping the melodies more tighter allows SPELLLING’s brand of song-crafting to adapt into direct melodic structures that still leaves more quality than it does not. Whether that be the gradual melodic cresendos that allows ‘Portrait Of My Heart’ to feel all of its yearning, the instrumental prog rock swells that builds off on the back half of ‘Keep It Alive’, the pop punk snarl of ‘Alibi’ paired with that rambunctious hook and Patrick McCrory’s gliding guitar solo, SPELLLING’s vocals going bigger as she slides out of the mix of ‘Waterfall’ amidst the punchy grooves, the optimistic gleaming strings and pianos of ‘Destiny Arrives’ that effectively compliments SPELLLING’s gorgeous singing, the moody synthwave ballad of ‘Mount Analogue’ with Toro Y Moi’s solemn vocals resonating well with SPELLLING’s yearning delivery, the grunge tapestry of ‘Drain’ that showcases these ravenous set of melodies and performances - further accentuated with Braxton Marcellous’ guitar playing and the backhalf getting heavier with its sludgy riffs and fast-paced percussions, and the cover of ‘Sometimes’ that carries more magical touch through the synth cascades around the serene walls of guitars.
This sonic shift leads off into what the record aims to pull together thematically. It’s essentially a consistent reminder of yearning beyond SPELLLING’s current stasis in both the romantic and the personal sense, making up an effort to break out of that introverted mystique and reaching into the extroverted connection that she is clearly trying so hard to cling onto. With poetry being that’s more direct and charged, it only adds to SPELLLING’s overall emotional range, where there is clearly a lot more confidence in expressing the desire for a connection and belongingness that will feel so transcendent, a wistful feeling that only allows the highs and the lows of love to be enrapturing at the end. It does make the cover of ‘Sometimes’ by My Bloody Valentine the perfect way to close the record in its interesting way, where the original song bleeds the quaint vocals with the maximalist wall of sound, representing the introverted personalities whose yearning is so much bigger than themselves. Clearly a feeling that SPELLLING definitely resonates with a lot, ending up encapturing that feeling in her own way. Embracing both the introverted and the extroverted without overwhelming the other.
However, while this thematic conflict meshes into the production - with parts of the vocals being pushed aside in the back of the mix for a couple of tracks - it doesn’t always tend to benefit SPELLLING’s singing that gets even more biting in a lot of these potent grooves. It may work in a thematic sense, but it does mean that it sacrifices the energetic power that SPELLLING carries through in her delivery. What also dilutes the quality of the record comes through into some of the melodies that could been a bit more developed like the underwhelming vocal sections of ‘Ammunition’ and the mild death metal experiment on ‘Satisfaction’, and perhaps just the sonic direction towards Alternative Rock that could’ve took more fascinating directions, even if playing things straightforward does make sense for the thematic intent.
‘Portrait Of My Heart’ may not consistently reach those heart-pounding moments amidst this grounded approach, but it still manages to succeed in pushing SPELLLING to different sonic avenues while not exactly deducting what made her compelling as a musician, now just opening herself up within a familiar and straightforward soundscape. With a thematic reach that fascinatingly bleeds into the overall sound, tighter melodies that continue to build up its emotional swell, and SPELLLING strikingly honing into her sharper delivery, it pumps up her consistent sense of yearning. It’s a portrait of her own heart, one that pumps the desire to grasp for a love that will feel larger than life itself.
Favorite Tracks: ‘Portrait of My Heart’, ‘Keep It Alive’, ‘Alibi’, ‘Waterfall’, ‘Destiny Arrives’, ‘Mount Analogue’, ‘Drain’, ‘Sometimes’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Satisfaction’