Photo by Stephanie Pia

“Portrait of My Heart”, the lead single, opener, and title track from SPELLLING’s fourth studio effort, resounds in its chorus, “I don’t belong here!” over and over. This is truth. Nothing about the Bay Area avant-pop artist has ever felt conventional since the cosmic gothic pop of her 2017 debut, Pantheon of Me, and her sophomore breakthrough, Mazy Fly, traversed into the baroque prog explorations of 2021’s The Turning Wheel, and then soon after, its 2023 companion effort and orchestral reimagination, SPELLLING & The Mystery School. This inner feeling of “otherness” can probably be said to be at the core ethos of her sonic permutations. That again reaches a transformational point for Chrystia Cabral as she channels the Bay Area’s cast of shadowy post-punk into her self, as propulsive drums and guitar and bass lines hanging in the gallows create a celestial event within the body which makes the apparition of CEREMONY’s Anthony Anzaldo as an angel in its accompany music video a logical meeting ground for outsiders who bring all these hidden places into our own view.

Directed by: Amber Navarro

SPELLLING’s Portrait of My Heart will be released March 28th on Sacred Bones Records.