Feature: Cold Specks

Humbly, Yours
A modest look into the year that Cold Specks blew up.

Photography by Gemma Warren

—-

She’s played sold out shows around the world, been raved about in a ton of major music publications, and her debut album was shortlisted for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize next to Canadian big-timers like Drake, Feist and Grimes. But even with this list of accomplishments to her name, Al Spx remains one of the most humble ladies around.

Spx is the heart and mind behind Cold Specks, who quickly became one of this year’s most talked about new acts. I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is a downright stunning debut, filled with soulful, gut-wrenching songs that can easily send shivers down listeners’ spines.

And you could say that all of this started simply because Spx wanted something to do. “I realized I could sing and I was incredibly bored,” she said. “My mother bought me a guitar so I played around with it and tried to create things, really only to kill my boredom.”

She laughed when she remembered the first live show that she ever played. It was at the Art Bar at the Gladstone Hotel and Spx was only 16 at the time. She was wearing a scarf around her head and a black vest over a hippy, flowing dress. “I look back and it was fucking ridiculous,” she said. “I had a Casio keyboard and I would just bang on it. I didn’t know how to play it. I would just mess around and wail over it. There was probably 2 people there.”

That night at the Gladstone might not have been her big break, but it wasn’t too long before Spx got an opportunity to leave the city’s music/bar circuit to gain her success in a completely different way.

Jim Anderson, a record producer based in Wales, had heard her music and invited her to make a proper record with him. So, in a move she now calls “a little insane,” Spx quit her job at a call centre, dropped just about everything she knew, and moved to the UK. There, she began to really grow as a writer and as a musician. And of course, there, she created the album that’s got everyone talking.

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is like a 12-song attack on your emotions. And just as the album’s title would suggest, it’s that mix of grace and force that makes such an impact on listeners. Spx sings every dark and personal word with brutal (and beautiful) honesty.

The release of that album soon meant the end to shows like that first one at the Gladstone. Now, Spx is selling out venues in places like Copenhagen and playing with artists like Great Lake Swimmers and Conor Oberst. Not that you’ll hear her bragging about any of it any time soon. Even when remembering her night at the Polaris gala, she simply called her own performance “nerve-wracking” then went on to talk about how it was Grimes’ half-naked dancer and Kathleen Edwards’ children’s choir that stuck out the most to her.

If this is what the beginning looked like for Cold Specks, you can’t help but want to keep your eyes and ears open for what Spx has for us next. As of right now, she has a seemingly nonstop schedule packed with tour dates across North America and Europe, including one at dream-venue Massey Hall this coming Saturday opening for, as previously mentioned, Conor Oberst. “Which is really exciting,” said Spx, “because I worshiped him when I was in high school.”

In the midst of all this, Spx hasn’t stopped writing. And it looks like the good times have gotten to her. “The first [record] was incredibly depressing. Disgusting depressing,” she laughed, “And the next record’s just going to be a little more upbeat.”