Mazy Fly [Blue Vinyl] (LP)
Spellling
Amoeba Review
09/03/2020
Bay Area artist SPELLLING teamed up with purveyors of dark delights Sacred Bones for the release of her second full-length, Mazy Fly. The label describes the album as a “celestial voyage into the unknown,” and with singer/instrumentalist Chrystia Cabral’s glittering synths, haunted atmospheres, and otherworldly vocals, it’s a pretty apt description. Cabral doesn’t shy away from the murkier depths in her lyrics and music; lead single “Haunted Waters” memorializes the violent destiny of a slave ship charting the deadly Middle Passage, and much of her lyrical focus elsewhere on the album concerns humanity’s ability to simultaneously create progress and destruction. Yet there’s an optimism to Mazy Fly, a beauty despite the pain, a captivating catharsis. Utterly gripping and totally gorgeous.