Something In The Room She Moves - Julia Holter: Review
Review by Lav:
Julia Holter has been one of my favorite artists of the past 15 years by absolutely any metric. Since her very beginning, she's been dazzling with absolute whimsy weaved into almost everything she's done. In 2013 she reached a peak of accessibility with her immaculate textures weaved into irresistible wintry indie songs. But since then she's been indulging further and further into experimental flavors of instrumentation and composition. After releasing a magnum ops of experimental beauty on 2018's Aviary I was thrilled for whatever she was going to drop next. While that album is hardly an indulgence in excess, by comparison, Something is a shift towards minimal space that comes with a no less beautiful eye for detail.
The singles from this album absolutely blew me away. Sun Girl came first and it also serves as the album's opener. I absolutely adore the song with its wandering pan flutes and field recordings. It comes together with this vibrant naturalistic tone that pairs perfectly with the flourishes of instrumentation. Even at their absolute subtlest Julia's vocals are nothing but utterly magical across the entire track, what a masterpiece.
I also think the second single Spinning is just amazing. I love the tight grooves and the way it all swells and erupts into this hook where Julia just seems like she's racing to get all her thoughts out as quickly as possible. It conveys an anguish in the writing so well that it makes the ultimate lyrical destination of being moved and felt seem like so much more satisfying of a destination. Evening Mood was the final single of the bunch completing an incredible run. Her vocal calls of "daylight hits me" while these fluttering synths wander around filling up the space behind her is one of the best moments on the entire record. It's another track that just does an extraordinary job of conveying naturalistic whimsy.
Among the deep cuts there are unsurprisingly even more highlights. These Morning is dominated by fluttering saxophone and keys that sound like they're from the middle of a fairy tale. It's tunning enough of an arrangement on its own but the addition of Julia's circular repetitive refrains takes me to a magical place I truly haven't been since Aviary. The same thing happens on the title track which serves up some of the most spellbinding refrains I've heard on any Julia Holter song ever, which is saying a lot. The song also has a rise in tempo and instrumentation across the final minute that is truly whimsical.
Talking To The Whisper is one of the most dissonant songs on the record in a very literal way, you'll know what I mean. But I think it manages to emerge from some of these more dissonant passage with surprisingly catchy and beautiful sonic moments. I also love the closing track Who Brings Me which is an utterly delightful finale to the record and one of the most gentle songs on the entire album save for a lone wiry string passage in the final 30 seconds.
The album also has occasional indulges into the world of ambient music. The best of which is Ocean which demands to be listened to with headphones because if I was ever abducted by benevolent aliens I have to imagine this is what it would sound and feel like. To the surprise of absolutely nobody it won me over quickly.
I was a little bit less fond of Meyou. The song is a Medulla-esque experimentation in ambient music using the voice as a primary instrument. It deploys repetition of the title phrase to essentially drive and evolve the song using what sounds like dozens of different vocalists. While the song is a very interesting experiment it never really felt as interesting to me on consecutive listens. I'm also not in love with Materia, the most stripped-down song on the album. Keys make up basically all of its instrumentation and while Julia's vocals are immaculate I just don't find the song itself all that compelling. I can't help but think it could have used a little bit more at just the right place to heighten the most dramatic moments, but that's also coming from somebody fighting the uphill battle of trying to dissect what the lyrics are about.
Julia Holter was away for 6 years and at no point in the time she was gone did I hear anyone else capable of conjuring her abstracted whimsical beauty. The words that keep coming up in this review sound less like describing and album and more like a fairy tale, that's by design. The record really does deliver that level of immersion heightened by the cohesion it maintains despite a widely varying sonic palette. At the center of it all is Julia herself who rarely needs to strain as either a vocalist or a writer. Her abstracted poetry and subtle vocal poise are both perfect for an album whose bells and whistles are so magically compelling. Julia has created such a high standard of excellence that nobody will be surprised by the acclaim this record receives. But that doesn't mean you can't put it on and fall headfirst into a world of surreal mysticism absolutely stacked full of articulate, hand-crafted detail. 8.5/10
For more incredible music check out my review of Chelsea Wolfe's She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She
