Staff Reviews

Julia Holter - Loud City Song

Review by Andrzej Lukowski

Loud City Song is Julia Holter's third album is three years, and it's anyone's guess where she's going to go next - the only sensible response is to hold tight for the ride.»

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'Loud City Song' is the new studio recording by Los Angeles based artist Julia Holter on Domino. The album is Holter's third full length release in as many years - following 2011's groundbreaking debut 'Tragedy' and last year's follow-up, the critically lauded 'Ekstasis'. Her first studio album proper, 'Loud City Song' is both a continuation and a furthering of the fiercely singular and focused vision displayed by its predecessors, taking as it does Holter's rare gift for merging high concept, compositional prowess and experimentation with pop sensibility and applying it to a set of even more daringly beautiful arrangements and emotionally resonant songs. The songs that make up 'Loud City Song' have origins that pre-date 2011's debut 'Tragedy' - coaxed out and finessed as demos in Holter's bedroom studio and then finally coalesced into one thrillingly cohesive experience in the latter stages of 2012 by Holter and co-producer Cole Marsden Grief-Neill and an ensemble of Los Angeles musicians. The result is an album of enormous ambition - Holter taking inspiration from Collette's 1944 novella Gigi and using it as a prism through which to explore her relationship with her hometown of Los Angeles and modern life universally, taking cues from the work of Joni Mitchell and the poetry of Frank O'Hara but forging those touch-points into something resolutely unique.
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