When your hear Al Spx – the Canadien singer/songwriter behind Cold Specks – sing on “Absisto”, it’s easy to understand why she was asked by Swans to lend her voice on To Be Kind’s 34 minute marathon “Bring The Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture”. Not that you hear her much through the dense and doom-hampered ambiance , but just the fact that she plays part on To Be Kind should give hints of a mission to seek a darker tone than her relatively damped and drama-free debut I Predict A Graceful Expulsion.
Here, she shows an ambition to move into an intensified, fuller sound, where her transfixing, bleeding timbre roams more freely; soaring into dramatic heights she only touched on before. Perhaps “Absisto” isn’t the most representative track off Neuroplasticity, her upcoming second album, as she recently described it being one of the “more unusual songs on the record.” But even so, I find “Absisto” to be a nice surprise.
Neuroplasticity comes out August 26, via Arts & Crafts.
