Chrystia “Tia” Cabral’s immersion in the richness of Black culture showed her the depth of her own creativity.
“Growing up around other Black people, it’s like there was the ability to make everything more special than it is,” Cabral says. “Like the fantastical abilities of Black culture to be so prolific with whatever we have around us.”
In a world where racial prejudice puts boundaries on the self-expression of people of color, it is precisely the culture and community of Blackness that has empowered Cabral, better known by her stage name SPELLLING, to plumb her own artistic well. Pivoting from a background in visual art, the 33-year-old creative born and raised in Sacramento, California — who is also of Mexican descent — turned toward music in 2015, releasing five full-length albums in the decade since.
“Creativity is not about how you work or style yourself or what you do,” Cabral, now based in Oakland, tells Boulder Weekly ahead of her upcoming May 17 show at Denver’s Bluebird Theater. “It’s about wit and the ability to be mentally sharp and innovative. In that sense, I feel like I’ve never been limited.”
‘The ultimate form of magic’
Cabral self-released her first LP, Pantheon of Me,in 2017, a mystical record with sparse instrumentation and rich layers of her self-taught vocals coursing throughout its 38-minute runtime. The next year, after signing to Sacred Bones — the Brooklyn-based label whose roster includes Molchat Doma, Zola Jesus and the late David Lynch — Cabral released the carnivalesque Mazy Fly, followed by the lush and extravagant 2021 epic, The Turning Wheel.
Equal parts bright and dark, The Turning Wheel takes the otherworldly elements of earlier SPELLLING projects and refines them to their most concentrated, affecting form. Themes of isolation and humanity’s exploitation of nature emerge, sung in Cabral’s coquettish falsetto, like on the symphonic “Emperor with an Egg” and the trudging “Magic Act,” where she intones: “Take my body / Make my brain a garden.”
Cabral says the vocal stylings on her breakthrough third LP were inspired by the distinctive vocals of women performers she listened to in childhood.
“I tried to emulate all of them, like Amy Winehouse, Brandy and Janet Jackson,” she says. “On The Turning Wheel, I adapted the way I sing to fit the character I wanted the listener to experience. I wanted there to be this unpinnable girlishness. There was this borderline eerie sound I wanted on the songs that are more conceptually sinister and existential. As a producer, I used effects to play that up.”
Cabral’s penchant for otherworldliness extends to her stage moniker, which she describes as “an entity that’s outside of me.” For an artist steeped in the aforementioned “fantastical abilities” of Black culture, it was an opportunity to bring a little more sorcery to the table.
“I picture this sprite entity, and I tried using my voice in a way that put the music in a magical realm,” she says. “To me, that’s the ultimate form of magic and alchemy: the innovation of sound, [creating] a sound that has never existed before.”
‘More wizard than woman’
On her new record Portrait of My Heart, released March 28 via Sacred Bones, Cabral pushes against the edges of her seemingly boundless artistry. Still true to her signature haunting, romantic tone and open-hearted lyrics, the LP is an indelible rock album, full of songs about breakups, devotion and mismanaged expectations in love.
Songs like “Love Ray Eyes” and the grunge-inspired “Alibi” (featuring Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory) sound like tunes made to be belted in the shower while no one else is home, the hook to the latter offering a stinging catharsis: “You’re a psychopath / and I love you for that / but I won’t take you back this time.”
When asked about the purpose of angst in her life and music, Cabral says she’s something of a late bloomer. A contented yet emo teen who spent hours listening to System of a Down’s Hypnotize on repeat, she began finding language for that pent-up discontent in adulthood.
“I’m in my 30s now, and I’ve been addressing some of those wounds,” she says.
But that’s not the only way Cabral sees herself as a work in progress. Sometimes feeling out of alignment with her womanhood, the artist’s inner vision is still evolving as she pushes against rigid expectations of gender expression.
“Even when [fans] call me ‘mother,’ I know it’s coming from a place of love, but I also feel like I relate more to being a wizard than a woman,” she says. “It’s taken a long time for me to heal old wounds and own my power. I have a lot of strength and untapped potential in my relationship to being a woman I hadn’t allowed myself to dig into.”
ON THE BILL: SPELLLING with Ramakhandra. 8 p.m. Saturday, May 17, Bluebird Theater 3317 E Colfax Ave., Denver. $33