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Mar 31, 2017 Web Exclusive By Lauren Hardy

Recorded live over two days in London, In The Same Room is the glowing starter sparks of Domino Documents, Domino Records’ new imprint, its documentary-on-sound homage to music’s radio-era grainy golden years smartly dressed into impeccably produced live-cut studio recordings. Herein, we are introduced to the introspective space of the music maker. Composer and classically trained pianist Julia Holter and her wild things—beloved tracks from her past offerings—are reigned in and led to run even wilder in her gorgeously bounding set.

In the Same Room is orchestral and operatic, brushed lines and dramatic gestures, and the presentation of what’s at stake, the counts, strings, piano, and drums gathering in a splendid coup. We are pinned there in the air of it all, among the echoing repetitive switch-boarded vocal tracks responding to and pushing against each other, creating a stirring conversation between Holter and herself. Holter is Siouxsie Sioux meets Kate Bush, with a matchstick intensity, relighting her own wick by the conversation in her voice, her diaphragm shifting between instruments. Alternating between carnivorous and lamb-like, Holter bears whole worlds in her songs.

“Feel You” plucks with light-scaped harpsichord, brighter than ever, the lights in the windows turning on one by one, drawing our eyes to the winsome assemblage. “Silhouette” is like a mudslide, gathering and sliding violently into a terrific final crash. “Sea Calls Me Home” shutters between devastated and whimsical—effectively personifying everything Jon Brion and The Polyphonic Spree did for the soundtrack of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Holter is beating vocals, undoing curtseys and the classroom, untrained in many instruments but master of them all. She proves herself to be radiance incarnate swarming the music world, the bees of her mind trapping fragrances and stinging them out, both compelling and unapologetic. In the flesh, even more so. (www.juliashammasholter.com)

Author rating: 8/10