Cold Specks with AroarA at Lee’s Palace

Cold Specks and AroarA performed at Lee’s Palace in Toronto. The 26 year-old Canadian singer under the sobriquet Al Spx has been a byword for rare talent and depth of feeling since her arrival in late 2011. In November, in the afterglow of first single ‘Holland,’ she performed ‘Lay Me Down,’ and ‘Old Stepstone’ on Jools Holland. It turned into one of those shared national moments of cutlery-dropping, slack-jawed TV transfixion. On Neuroplasticity (2014) Spx’s words and delivery capture whatever could be said to exist and be perceptible of something beyond ourselves: as a record of the briefest flicker of consciousness counterbalanced against a roaring urge to return to the darkness.