Cold Specks

Tim Says: Every man needs a center, a place that you can go when you need to re-jigger everything and get back into a headspace that feels both like home, and like wearing a sleeveless terry cloth sleeping shirt. There is comfort there, it's where we go to feel connected and safe in a world that is anything but certain. I Predict A Graceful Expulsion by Cold Specks is one of those records that helps you get there.

It has become my go-to album anytime I need to quiet the noise rattling around in my head. It is the album I throw on when nothing else is working. The second Al Spx's smokey vocals hit my ear holes I slip into a state of complete and total ease. I am instantly at home, wrapped in the warmth and dark comfort that lives in I Predict A Graceful Expulsion.

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is a very personal look into a lifetime. Snippets, scenes and the brief moments that make up a person and a personal history. In a lot of ways it feels like one of those great indie movies that teaches you everything about yourself and who you are through a series beautiful shorts tied together through the insightful eyes of a central character. It catches the details that make up the memories and emotions of life's formative moments. The connections that make a certain smell or the way the sun breaks through the green foliage on an early spring morning bring you back to a very specific period of your life with a very distinct set of emotions. Cold Specks is masterful in that way.

I adore this album, I adore Al Spx's voice and the way it sounds like good scotch tastes. I want to snuggle with the guitars and take long baths with the melodies of I Predict A Graceful Expulsion. It makes me happy to be alive. Happy to be the person I am and for the trials and tribulations that brought me here. It is a life affirming album that seems to breath and perspire in a way that makes me think that when it ends, it is just the end of our time together, and then it goes on to the pub to hang out with a bunch of colorful characters that make up this particular universe.

I can't wait till our next visit.

Joel Says: Cold Specks or Al Spx, whichever awesome name you pick to call this gorgeous voice and equally gorgeous woman, has the perfect set of pipes. I spent weeks giving myself room to figure out just exactly who I felt she sounded like, while at the same time sounding uniquely herself. This morning I think I figured it out: she is the disgustingly perfect marriage of Bonnie Raitt's throaty blues rasp meets Adele's diaphragm and ability to make even the most disposable lyrics sound like the climax of a movie where regardless of who you're sitting next to, you're wiping tears from your eyes.

The entire album is filled with that sense of welcoming where you aren't interested in where you're going or where you came from, you're just fucking comfortable being. Cold Specks isn't something I would put on at a party, but then again, I don't throw parties, because I would choose to put her on. She's exactly what you needed without knowing you were missing a voice in your life.

Seemingly effortless and absofuckinglutely beautiful, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is a perfect example of peaceful restraint in modern music. There are no over the tops, it just is, and what it is is fucking mindblowingly respectable and, for lack of a better word, perfect.