“Something in the Room She Moves” – Julia Holter

Album: Something in the Room She Moves

Artist: Julia Holter

Year: 2024

Genre: Art Pop, Experimental Pop

Grade: A-

Airy, weightless, spacey, delicate, formless — choose any adjective that can also describe a noble gas, and you have an apt representation of California artist Julia Holter’s 2024 album Something in the Room She Moves. The 10-song, 54-minute soundscape is a mesmerizing display of ambient-jazz-pop, complete with flutes, brass, strings, electronics and a heavy dosage of fretless bass. Solipsistic in a sense, the album creates a uniquely refined, self-contained sound-world that is in line with what we’ve come to expect with Holter. She’s an abstract classicist in the grand musical tradition of Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Lætitia Sadier, Joanna Newsom and Björk.

Something in the Room She Moves is an amalgamation of Holter’s past styles — the baroque art pop of her vintage early days (Loud City Song and Have You in My Wilderness), the experimental shapelessness of 2018’s Aviary, and the ambient qualities of her recent forays into film soundtracks and postmodern classical (Never Rarely Sometimes and Behind the Wallpaper, respectively).

But the album is also a collection of several outside influences that Holter has woven into her tapestry throughout the years. I detect shades of There’s a Riot Going on by Yo La Tengo, Future Days by Can, and most notably Promises by Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders. There’s free jazz catharsis at the end of “Talking to the Whisper,” ambient impressionism in “Ocean,” minimal tribalism in “Meyou.” And then there’s more conventional melodicism on the album’s splendid opening tracks, “Sun Girl” and “These Morning.” Basically something for everyone in the context of Holter fans.

Ever since her career began to take off circa 2011, Holter’s music has always been interesting, a heavenly blend of sounds old and new. But at times the music on Something in the Room She Moves is so heavenly that the listener is liable to float away and nod off to dreamland. Her lyrics, which take on the form of free verse poems, are beautifully sung but with meanings that aren’t quite interpretable, with complex artistic references and historical allusions that may not always be quite relatable. Either way, her luxurious sense of wonder is remarkably consistent and well-conveyed — the great strength of this LP.

As far as Holter albums go, Something in the Room She Moves is another introspective journey to the center of the self, a solid effort that will undoubtedly satisfy her fans and create some new ones in the process. But it also seems to exist in its own little bubble, a lack of structure in the songs on the back half of the album (they tend to go on and on and then tail off, like an ocean swell) which keeps it from being on the same level as her previous classics. A good and enjoyable listen, nonetheless.

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