Julia Holter

This is great! Every JH album is great in its own way, I'm not sure I get the sentiment that this is somehow her masterpiece or a big step up from HYIMW or Ekstasis. Early days though.

It's much grander in scope than its predecessors. I've managed to listen through twice. I haven't digested it, but I'm looking forward to getting to know it much better

OMG @ 'Les Jeux To You'.

This sounds awesome so far, closer to the kind of album I was ready for after Loud City Song. Every song seems to have at least a few moments as huge as "Maxim's I" ~0:56 or "Boy in the Moon" ~4:28.

i placed an order for this but haven't rec' it yet. is "underneath the moon" a roches cover?

*rec'd

I've only listened to this once and it's going to take a while to get to grips with it but I'd have to say it's her best work yet. She gets better with every album and there's not many artists you can say that about

After the first listen I was pretty much dumbfounded, and left with a sense that I had listened to something extremely dense, almost completely bereft of hooks, that doesn't make for easy entry, but also a sensational piece of musical exploration. I'm looking forward to getting further and deeper inside this record.

Nerdy fact: "Whether" used to be called "Heijinian" (and was based around staccato piano) when I first heard her play it live back in 2016. That night she also performed a slower ballad called "Where R U" on the setlist, but I don't remember it enough to match it to any of the songs on Aviary.

Keep the nerdy facts coming! I'm loving the allusions to women poets.

I need to listen to this a second time, but I felt like I was listening to a kind of Restorative School Of Magic counter-part to The Drift's spells of darkness and destruction.

Which is to say, both Holter and Walker have elected to create a style of music that, instead of composing songs with either already-existing or here-are-some-new-ideas approaches to melody/hooks/lyrics/whatever, they stop "writing songs" and push the very concept into the abstract-- thus the lack of hooks or melodies and the obliqueness of the lyrics-- to create a listening experience where the essential qualities of the material are found in the production and sonic composition rather than any "songs"

Hard to describe maybe? I'll listen a few more times and think about it more

i think the second side is pretty full of melodies, even if the vocals are a little pushed back in the mix

I am listening to this for the first time today, in a bit of an anxious mood and it isn't exactly soothing, but loving it anyway - should come back to it when in the right mood.

my LP just showed up and man no one was lying about the packaging, forgot it came with a signed photo too <3

this is fucking magnificent

Honestly cannot believe how stunning “Turn the Light on” is

every time i find myself thinking "oh the hooks have all disappeared i am in a wilderness of tones" a hook usually appears

i love this album

oh and yeah the back half is full of bangers i guess

Although every song on this is very different from every other song, I feel justified in saying that it’s like an entire album of songs like Jane Siberry’s “Bird In The Gravel”.

otm

I’m a bit afraid to listen to this as I feel very proprietary about Ekstasis and I don’t want this to be better.

Tim F otm a very specific and correct otm

Humbug.

Let Jeux To You HD good though

*Les

Rest of the album gave me anxiety. So much...music, so much content, and none of it exciting. I felt throttled and exacted. I don't like her song structures or melodies. I don't understand her art. Glad you're all enjoying yourselves though - I just don't get it!

I feel the same and its a blessed relief when the luxurious sound of "I Shall Love 2" comes around

I've only listened to this album twice though tbf so it'll take a while for its charms to become apparent

“A bit too extra, for imago” should be the sticker on the album cover

it still makes zero sense to me that lj doesn't like her

i mean i get it but also when i listened to this record i thought "maybe this is the one for lj" :(

To my mind, there was at least a 75% chance that he would proselytise for it but the quarter won out.

I'll certainly listen to it again, as much to work out why it doesn't work for me as to try and get something out of it

I think I liked the short second track as well tbf. I'm not sure she can pull off things that aren't pop. Talk Talk feels like a really big stretch

Talk Talk is just the easy reference point people immediately reach for when they hear music with woodwinds and a sort of hushed atmosphere, it doesn't sound like Talk Talk to me.

It's like when people compared Field of Reeds to Talk Talk and it's just like, Jesus, listen to other music!

there’s way more space and delay on talk talk records, this is v composed and full and constantly thrumming

there’s a lot of space on this record too but imo it’s used very differently

haha I made the exact connection to field of reeds when reading this thread! Not so much the talk talk thing as the general casting around for reference points, just felt similar to me.

There's a lot more repetition on Talk Talk records as well, this is almost constantly roving into new areas.

much of this fell straight into my kaitlyn aurelia smith 'saying little with a lot' unhappy place tbh, if you want a comparison you'll probably find more flattering or accurate. something about lush maximalism

i think she's saying quite a lot, the experience of the record is like a brain unloading itself (or, true to its title, like being in an atrium of squawking thoughts)

admittedly this is a quality shared by most of my favorite records this year (the mewithoutyou record lyrically is like a brain unloading itself)

The title is the cherry on top of the “huh lj doesn’t like this”

speaking of titles, she and KAS have the same irritatingly arch way of titling things too. 'ekstasis', 'euclid', 'i would rather see', 'i am curious, i care'

This is fascinating so far. Full of surprising turns.

and yeah I'm sure she's saying plenty. I just can't hear any of it. I'm saying 'it's not you, it's me' this time

Don't much care for KAS for the very reasons you mention, yet I enjoyed my first encounter with Aviary – its maximalism did not strike me as an empty form carefully concealing itself.

love JH but this was a racket for me on first listen

I'll give it another chance now/this evening

fgti was otm upthread when he compared this to Scott Walker's late works, a far apter point of comparison than Talk Talk.

This is going to be fun to explore. I feel like this is the music I've been waiting to hear this year.

vinyl feels like the right format for this record, the chunking helps it feel less oppressive

also just on a selfish consumer level, I appreciate a double LP that's actually the length of an old-school double album