Review: Julia Holter, Anson Rooms

There was a really intimate, atmosphere in the Anson Rooms for Julia Holter last night. The stage illuminated in dark blues, reds and oranges, the audience was either really polite, or a little bit intimidated by the L.A composer and multi-instrumentalist.

Chicago based Haley Fohr, who records and performs under the name Circuit Des Yeux was on first, in support. Everyone was mesmerized as she played a solo acoustic set of brand new music. Bathed in orange from ten backlit spotlights, her face was obscured like a singer in some smokey bar in the ‘50s.

Taking quite a detour from the distorted, experimental sound of her albums, the room was filled with such a full body of sound from her new twelve string guitar, which at times sounded like a sitar and others more like a banjo. The bass strings created a drone effect throughout that matched the tenor of her voice. Notes quivered in the air as she stretched and held them in the same operatic vein as folk singer Joan Baez. The silence between songs was intense (I guess tuning a twelve string takes twice as long?), the only sound being made was the squeak of trainers on the Anson Rooms’ gym-style floor. The crowd seemed to be a bit in awe, partly due to the mysterious presence of the figure on stage, partly from surprise at the voice coming from Haley. We were all fully entranced in time for Julia Holter.

The five-piece band came on stage: viola, saxophone, double bassist, drummer, and Julia herself on keys. Julia spoke as if we had all the time in the world. A band who are in absolutely no rush (“I’ll take my time, there’s no reason to rush” being one of her lyrics) , they played a really relaxed set of offbeat pop that somehow managed to capture the sprawling expanse of her records. The double bass would be plucked for a verse, then out of nowhere a bow would appear for the chorus and change the style. The drummer used an array of suspended keys and bells to puncture the air with treble stings, and the viola player harmonised and echoed Julia’s vocals.

Julia gave credit to the sound engineers, and rightfully so. The mix was just perfect, with each instrument drifting in and out at just the right moment. The saxophone would step forward out of the mix for a line or two, and then drift back just as the viola would play a flourish, and which point the drummer would hit one of his bells. Their set moved through a mix of older and darker experimental tracks, crowdpleasing hits from the new album, Have You In My Wilderness, and a selection of “new ideas”, from which Julia will now take a break from touring to write and record. They ended their encore with the powerful ballad Sea Calls Me Home and some very impressive whistling.

Before the gig, I wondered how Julia Holter’s multi-layered, often quite complex blend of indie music and electronic composition would translate to a live setting. Now I know that with the right mix, and a handful of individually talented musicians, it sounds really wonderful.