Cult Following

When Laurel Sprengelmeyer began performing as Little Scream in 2008, she played her first shows in Montreal using only a battered Stratotone guitar, a cigarette amp, and a mic on the floor so her feet could serve as percussion. “That’s why I always wore high heels. They made the best stomping sounds.” She would wail and coo, imitating the sounds of missing instruments that ended up as siren calls on her 2011 debut The Golden Record (Secretly Canadian/Outside Music), which Pitchfork called “a perfectly mixed bag of graceful folk, coiled pop, and expansive art rock” and NPR dubbed “absolutely captivating.” If that album was Little Scream’s searching, enchanting first step into the world, then Cult Following is the badass landmark cementing her place there.