The music of Cold Specks — 24-year-old Canadian songstress Al Spx (not her real name, either) — feels as remote and, well, cold as her native Etobicoke sounds like it must be. (Actually, it’s just a part of Toronto.) I Predict a Graceful Expulsion (Mute) embodies the epic, enigmatic weight of its quasi-biblical title: a collection of sparse, dark, modern-yet-timeless folk hymns, rife with a bluesy fervency that’s at once shadowy and soothing, thanks mostly to Spx’s astonishing, craggily soulful voice. It’s the sort of startling, ear-turning sound that might prompt the coinage of entire new genre contrivances like “Gothspel” (or Spx’s own description, “doom soul”) if that didn’t feel so pointlessly, imprudently flippant around music this nakedly elemental.
Fri., Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $10, with Bad Braids, First Unitarian Church Side Chapel, 2125 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.
