SPELLLING – ‘Portrait Of My Heart’ review: the art pop artist turns to loud, intergalactic grunge

28 March, 2025

SPELLLING portrait of my heart review

SPELLLING’s 2021 album ‘The Turning Wheel’ saw Chrystia Cabral graduate from lone warrior (as on her first two albums, 2017’s ‘Pantheon of Me’, crafted solely with a handy MicroKORG keyboard, and the psychedelic 2019 release ‘Mazy Fly’) to Kate Bush-like commander. With a sprawling cast of musicians, who turned her intimate visions into chamber pop fables, the art pop star captivated a wider audience with that breakthrough record.

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Now backed by her band, the Mystery School, SPELLING’s fourth album ‘Portrait Of My Heart’ sees Cabral letting listeners inch closer under her otherworldly glow. It kicks off with a shock to the system – its opening title track is more grungey than ornate, sounding like an MTV Unplugged jam in an orchestra pit. Its anthemic refrain “I don’t belong here” is unusually direct, though fitting. A cursory listen of Cabral’s past music would make anyone suspect she’s not of this world. But it’s how SPELLING sings it, as if she’s only just realised it herself.

Her vulnerability also comes dripping in venom at moments. On the startlingly pop-punk ‘Alibi’ – imagine if Paramore made ‘Misery Business’ with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, –SPELLING seethes: “You’re a psychopath / And I loved you for that / But I won’t take you back, this time.” Someone like Cabral – who draws from both the collectivist sci-fi of Ursula K Le Guin and her Catholic faith – knows vulnerability needs strength to overcome, and that it can come from community. It’s probably why she’s confident in performing her most personal songs, for the first time, with featured artists.

The soulful ballad ‘Mount Analogue’ features Toro y Moi, who gently answers SPELLING’s pleas to the void. ZULU guitarist Braxton Marcellous adds gravity to ‘Drain’, a gothic love song that evolves into a dizzying psych-metal meltdown. Meanwhile, ‘Satisfaction’ goes even harder, veering closer to Deftones territory before swerving into a death metal bloodbath. In an album full of surprises, though, it’s the last track that will catch most listeners unawares: a cover of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Sometimes’. The shoegaze original buried its words underneath abundant layers of guitars, but from SPELLLING, lines like “You can’t hide from the way I feel” resound with a limitless echo.

Since her 2021 breakthrough ‘The Turning Wheel’, discussing the music of SPELLLING has often been relegated to one point of comparison: Kate Bush. Both embrace the mystic, both are synth fiends and both are channels for transcendence. But ‘Portrait Of My Heart’ shows Cabral, who has spent her nearly decade-long career building her own universe, not relishing comfort but raging against its vast expanse.