Julia Holter

I've been obsessed with Julia Holter's music for about a month now. Her songwriting seems to be informed by the purest blend of playfulness and prowess, imbuing her songs with an elegance and ingenuity that leave me with a somewhat enchanted urge to keep discovering deeper layers on subsequent listens.

As complex as her latest album "Something in The Room She Moves" is, I had the feeling that there was still much more of Julia to be unearthed. And yes... this rabbit hole of an oeuvre soon turned out to run deep. Very deep. 

So I began to explore her catalog, working my way backwards, starting with “Aviary” (2018) and “Have You in My Wilderness” (2015), then moving on to “Loud City Noise” (2013) and her earlier works “Ekstasis” (2012) and “Tragedy” (2011). Though her albums differ in every possible way, her sensitivity to tone and bold use of form shine throughout her eclectic body of work. Furthermore, her experimentation with words and meaning is consistent throughout, with each album suggesting a strong sense of a central concept that, nevertheless, remains elegantly elusive.       

In her interviews, she often talks about how discovering home recording was a turning point in her creative development. Once she realized the benefits of recording, she describes being overtaken by a sense of urgency that led her to immediately begin making her early albums at home using very basic yet attainable tools (e.g. Audacity). She often describes her creative process as being "child-like" and "disorganized", with ideas emerging intuitively from making "tons of recordings". However, she also stresses the importance of committing to a perspective later in the process, working on a song as much as necessary for it to feel sincere. 

Another key point she often touches on is the inspiration she gets from working with other musicians, something she had little experience with in the beginning, and had often felt insecure about. There is literally a gold mine of creative musicians to be discovered in her collaborations, with each member worth checking out in their own right. They include bassist Devra Hoff, composer Tashi Wada, drummers Beth Goodfellow and Corey Vogel, trumpeter and electronic artist Sarah Belle Reid and many more. 
   

I could go on and on about how inspiring an artist I find her to be, were it not for the fact that the harder I try to formulate a coherent statement, the more likely it is to fall short of capturing the experience, let alone convincingly describing the music. Too many times I found myself saying "Wait...whaaat??" before having to rewind and listen to a section again. It is the kind of music that defies discourse because it is in a constant state of "becoming".

It has truly been a weird and exciting journey.