2018 - USA
Progressive Pop, Art Pop, Experimental, Modern Classical
You know things are going to be different. Really different. Turn the Light On, the opening song, doesn’t let us breathe a second. We dive. How deep we dive ! How far. The relentless drums, the vocals sounding like an incantation, the spell has been cast. Aviary indeed, we feel like inside a huge bird house where thousands of birds fly in every direction as if their life depended on how fast they are moving. On the second song, Whether, we’re already someplace else. A less organic, more electronic sound comes in to bewitch us again.
It’s impressive just to hear how quick Julia Holter reinvents her music minutes after minutes, but still crafting a cohesive and consistent record.
And then it… goes a bit less noisy in the aviary. Most of the birds are resting, and a few others keep flying, their gracious wings spreading in the space now left empty by the other birds. They are powerful, strange and their movements are unpredictable. The next songs act the same. Strange, powerful and unpredictable. Julia Holter goes more experimental here for the most unsettling and intriguing song of the record, Chaitius, then Everyday Is an Emergency.
But Julia Holter, on Aviary, during its greatest moments, reconnects with those majestic songs that fill every space of our ears with as many instruments as she can. I Shall Love 2. Sweeter than the rest. Sweet, sweet melodies both enthralling and spellbinding. It’s a tumult of emotions and a choir of voices growing and growing until the silence comes back again.
Aviary definitely is an album you need to experience several times because of its complexity and more difficult enjoyability than, for instance, Have You In My Wilderness. But when you hear songs like I Would Rather See and Les Jeux to You, you understand the challenge is definitely worth every single second, because Julia Holter might be the only artist capable of giving birth to such a world of sounds, such density. With some reverb in her voice, it feels like Julia Holter keeps building cathedrals of her own in the great wilderness of the universe. She’s the nave, she’s the crypt, she’s the pillars and the stained-glass windows. To enter this cathedral means to enter a world you don’t know, and this means enlarging your understanding of music.
It’s impressive just to hear how quick Julia Holter reinvents her music minutes after minutes, but still crafting a cohesive and consistent record.
And then it… goes a bit less noisy in the aviary. Most of the birds are resting, and a few others keep flying, their gracious wings spreading in the space now left empty by the other birds. They are powerful, strange and their movements are unpredictable. The next songs act the same. Strange, powerful and unpredictable. Julia Holter goes more experimental here for the most unsettling and intriguing song of the record, Chaitius, then Everyday Is an Emergency.
But Julia Holter, on Aviary, during its greatest moments, reconnects with those majestic songs that fill every space of our ears with as many instruments as she can. I Shall Love 2. Sweeter than the rest. Sweet, sweet melodies both enthralling and spellbinding. It’s a tumult of emotions and a choir of voices growing and growing until the silence comes back again.
Aviary definitely is an album you need to experience several times because of its complexity and more difficult enjoyability than, for instance, Have You In My Wilderness. But when you hear songs like I Would Rather See and Les Jeux to You, you understand the challenge is definitely worth every single second, because Julia Holter might be the only artist capable of giving birth to such a world of sounds, such density. With some reverb in her voice, it feels like Julia Holter keeps building cathedrals of her own in the great wilderness of the universe. She’s the nave, she’s the crypt, she’s the pillars and the stained-glass windows. To enter this cathedral means to enter a world you don’t know, and this means enlarging your understanding of music.