When Art and Mystic Collide with Captivating and Nuanced Music, We Get Spelles’ Debut Cinematic Album

This duo was established by Luc Laurent and Kathryn Baar way back in 2014, but their debut record landed on streaming services only almost a decade later.

I’m not sure if they were waiting for the technologies to advance enough to handle their meticulously crafted sound, but this delay was good for the album. In the manner of St. Vincent, Zola Jesus, Bat for Lashes, or Cate Le Bon, they competently connect art and stylish visuals with artistry, creating an almost gothic dream pop on the verge of… glam rock.

It’s hard to separate Kathryn’s Regina Spektor, Joanna Newsom, or even Bowie-like theatricality sense of style from ethereal, spiritual, and almost cinematic music, which could easily be part of every great movie, from Terrence Malick’s to Wim Wenders’, or Caspar David Friedrich’s night skies and morning mists. In the same way, it’s impossible to listen to Spelles without imagining large-scale and deserted landscapes.

In their soundscapes, Florence Welch-inspired stadium-worthy choruses (“Night Terrors”) are seamlessly intertwined with marching drums and Moby-ish synth splashes (“Flesh and Bones”) or punk-adjacent stomach-punching electronic swirls (“Diaspora, the Horses”), flowing into bluesy Nina Simone-indebted croons (“Double Life”) and minimalistic slow burners (“Chosen One”).

Often, beautiful visuals and visionary images in music only mean one thing — that musicians work with a good PR team and stylists. But when they craft such dazzling and sophisticated things on their own, it shows us that we are not only witnessing a musician but a true artist.