Cold Specks is Al Spx, a 24-year-old singer/songwriter from Etobicoke, Ontario who was signed to Mute earlier this year on the strength of an arresting demo. Spx-- the peculiar name is a pseudonym, invented to protect a devout and apparently disapproving family-- has the disoriented air of someone who's come further than she expected, and sooner: In interviews, she's shown some difficulty recalling the names of all her new bandmates and confesses she still occasionally gets ill before live performances.
When she begins singing, you understand the fuss: If you were, say, Frankie Sharp from Sharp Records, this is the sort of voice that makes you whip the big limo around. Rough-edged and dark but still velvety, with fluid hints of gospel-- it's a transfixing instrument, and it's the single ember glowing at the center of her chilly debut, the enigmatically titled I Predict a Graceful Expulsion. Her band, with the ingrained tact of session pros, defer to her, surrounding her with muted-gray washes of piano, guitar, cello, and distant horns. The songs gather weight slowly and gracefully, and the atmosphere feels instantly familiar from the last two National records. It's similarly comforting; this is a peerless Sunday-afternoon record, the kind you cradle like a chipped mug of tea in a heatless apartment.
What elevates I Predict a Graceful Expulsion above pure comfort food, however, is how it subtly tugs against the big, major-network-drama payoff for which it feels custom-built. There's a naggingly elusive quality to the songs that troubles as much as it soothes; Spx's voice is elemental, and her pleas tap into universal language-- bad seeds, sons and daughters, dying leaves. But there's a sense of snow-blind disorientation, of standing in the middle of a featureless expanse, that deepens the record's loneliness and heightens the sense of emotional stakes.
"Every map is blank," Spx mutters on "Blank Maps". "I put my hands over my chest/ Sons and daughters," goes the refrain on the swelling, spellbinding "Winter Solstice", and though it's howled like gospel, its meaning remains as private as silent prayer. The big chorus to "Blank Maps" is Spx howling "I am, I am/ A goddamn believer," and even though you have no sense what she believes, you feel swept up completely, borne along by her strange ardor.
