Spectreview: Spellling – The Turning Wheel

Released: June 25, 2021

Art-Pop
(Baroque Pop)
(Experimental R&B)
(Electronic)

-LIGHT GREEN-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

Holy cow, what a glow-up. Listen to Mazy Fly and then this record and notice the sheer distance between them; whatever Tia Cabral managed to harness over the last two-and-a-half years has resulted in this ambitious, dense, idiosyncratic, irresistible take on baroque pop. Every song on The Turning Wheel is its own entity, like small bubbles in a hastily-blown crystal ball, and yet the production – which manages to be ethereal and dry at once – preserves the organic, spellbinding feel of her earlier works. It feels lost in time, or perhaps timeless; though her subjects and her voice feels distinctly modern. There’s something undeniably classic about this music, something that feels rooted in the electronic golden age of the mid 80s.

The record unfurls in two acts, one allegedly more pop-oriented and one a little darker and cerebral. The divisions intermingle occasionally, but for the most part that description sticks. The songs on the first half find Cabral at her most whimsical, singing higher-register melodies that curl around her arrangements, which are largely built on sunlit synths and bouncy rhythms. In these first six songs, Cabral’s skill as a pop songwriter comes through loud and clear; you can easily envision tracks like the Julee Cruise-like “Always” and the sprightly “The Future” in the repertoire of today’s stars, albeit conformant to the sound of the day. More grandiose numbers, like “Little Deer” (a brilliant opener) and the graceful “Turning Wheel,” are less immediate but still showcase the unique voice that Cabral has cultivated over the last few years; the former is a triumph all its own, pairing the breathless ecstasy of a classic R&B vocal melody and instrumentation both soulful and baroque with the dread of a memento mori.

The second half, though it kicks off with arguable high point “Boys in School,” is where fatigue might set in on first listen. The Turning Wheel is a long record with plenty of indulgences, and the dip in mood (and in relative immediacy) may require an intermission to appreciate fully. Nevertheless, more highlights surface in the aforementioned Side B start, an introspection on Cabral’s wallflower tendencies that flows naturally from piano to fragile synths to soaring guitar across its seven-minute runtime. She continues to deploy the tricks hidden up her caftan; “Queen of Wands’” ornate intro is a red herring that hides the track’s menacing pulse, while “Revolution’s” major key balladry switches gears into a double-time breakdown that reflects the confidence written into its lyrics.

It’s not as accessible as art pop can get, but what The Turning Wheel does have is uniqueness and personality. It has them in spades. It’s hard to conceive of anybody but Cabral putting together these songs, deftly-written as they are, in the same way with the same parts. Everything that she’s cultivated in her artistry – the aesthetic that exists at a crossroads between gothic and fantastical, the style that borders both R&B and darkwave, the double-sided coin bearing the faces of morbidity and celebration –  comes to a culmination here. Now try to imagine her improving upon this.

Recommended for heart-to-hearts in giant mushroom houses.