Sep 23

Sep 23 Album Review: Julia Holter - Have You In My Wilderness

Last year, Julia Holter performed at the Barbican backed by the stargaze orchestra, a troupe that brought music from across her first three albums to full, breathing life. The audience was certainly spellbound by the spectacle, but the most excited person in the theatre was undoubtedly Holter herself. This was an extremely special occasion for her, since these grandiose, stately songs were created in her mind and recorded in a studio, but to see and hear them in their full glory was visibly a real trip for her and to be able to share the full magnificence of her creations with the audience was a moment of culmination. It was as if she was able to share the inside of her mind with the whole crowd, and was overwhelmed with joy by it.

The title and contents of her fourth album, Have You In My Wilderness, suggest that her desire to draw the listener into her world are stronger than ever. As such the album contains a lot of her most exquisitely scored songs to date, and her whimsical vocals are as enticing as ever. On her last album, Loud City Song, she deftly painted pictures of bustling streets and the various people that populate them. This time she largely takes out of the city, to more remote and fantastical locales, and wants us to experience it from her point of view, or that of the person she inhabits on each particular song.

As ever, her ethereal vocals floating in the mix and her preternatural ability with writing melodies for classical instrumentation bring the songs into Technicolor reality for the listener. 'Silhouette' starts as a playful, jazz-inflected number with a double bass and brush sticks that tempt us along as she sings of a partner that's spinning around her head but only sees in fractions. By the end the violins have roused themselves out of their graceful pace into something more cutting and harsh, signifying her lost and confused psyche as she trails around this mysterious phantom. This is thematic of the album, as many of the songs take up the point of view of women who are lost or stranded - but seem blissful in their disquietude. 'Lucette Stranded On The Island' reads like a distress call, particularly in the chorus "oh she's been marooned / can anybody help her?," but her voice floats gracefully over angelic harmonies, elegant violins and ornate piano, so the scene comes across more as a joyous escape - while the peril still prowls on the periphery. 'Sea Calls Me Home' is the following track and something of a companion piece. This time Holter's heroine is drowning, but in doing so she's been freed; "I can't swim! It's lucidity! So clear!" she declares triumphantly over thumping percussion and stabbing organ chords in her most anthemic chorus to date.

In all of the songs, she's taking us on a journey in her mind. Sometimes it's a simplistic and tangible tale, as on the opening track 'Feel You' where we follow Holter's experience of Mexico City, being dazed by the rain, noise and colours, and we feel ourselves standing there next to her amidst the bustle of the crowd. Elsewhere on 'Vasquez' we're taken into the mind of a "bandido in the gold country" through a glistening and seductively slithering neo-jazz production. But the most powerful escape is on 'Betsy On The Roof', which is told from the perspective of a desperate and invisible protagonist crying and reaching out in ineffective anguish to the titular character. 'Betsy' sweeps us up in a squall of emotion and carries us on a gust of strings and vocals as we swirl helplessly around the scene, until the song is expertly brought back down again to just a piano, and you can even hear the bench creaking beneath Holter in the recording, and you're reminded that you've just experienced the powerful creation of a singularly musical mind.

'How Long' and 'Night Song' feature solely strings and Holter's voice. These songs aren't as immediately exciting as most of the others on the album, and due to the somnolent nature of the violins, listeners might drift off into their own thoughts during them. However, Holter's voice is still as captivating as ever, and if you truly stand alongside her in listening to these songs as you're made to do in the others on the album, then you'll find these as charming as anything else. In all, Holter has made an album about blissful, hypnotic escape in many forms, and in listening to it and engaging with it, you'll be overwhelmed by these feelings too.