Julia Holter – Something in the Room She Moves Review

Physicality is truth for Julia Holter, whose sixth album, Something in the Room She Moves, marks itself as an open and honest piece. A weird coincidence and a reference to The Beatles in her title marks this latest project, a powerful embrace of the stress and chills of childbirth in a lockdown. Instead of her usual influences, the literature and loving embrace of other words, Holter makes do with her adaptation to a new life, another chapter. Ponyo replaces Proust and documentaries on The Beatles settle in and pierce this latest Holter work with influences both obvious and subtle. Something in the Room She Moves may have spawned out of a chance need to name a LogicPro file but its effectiveness in capturing the mood Holter presents here is marvellous.  

Opener Sun Room has all the jagged instrumentals of a life lived in frustrating back and forth. Holding onto the old self after a life-changing experience, working it into this new period, Holter airs her acceptance on Sun Room but still struggles to mark this change as a permanent one. An excellent fuzz of flutes and bass, the dawning synths which open a white light of the potential for the future take hold in those ticking last seconds, and the effective pool of imagery Holter must work from is carried on. Smooth saxophone additions to These Mornings mark the blistering suns as fitting, hopeful moments in a life spiralling through positive chaos. Finding yourself again – the person before a major event, not the self-worth or values – is a tough battle. Holter is fighting it and holds the silences of her title track to a much higher demand. Isolating the brass is an inevitable way to move a listener, as it does on this masterful Holter record. 

Holter has more than a couple of tracks which are good enough to leave listeners speechless. Spinning is a monumental triumph, and likely one of the best tracks to release so far this year. Intensity and highbrow stress are where we either buckle and recede into our old selves or find this new and different person. Our interests change, appetites wiped and focus strangled, fixated elsewhere. Something in the Room She Moves is overwhelming when this realisation is made not just for Holter and her effective, hard-hitting performance but because of the calm washing over the likes of Ocean. Seek out solitude in the peace of music for we cannot find it in the real world. What a rush.

Another piece from Holter which focuses on how crucial it is to be present in the here and now. Being in the room is different to being aware of the room. Something in the Room She Moves is a masterful overhaul of emotional outpour, the battle between returning to your old comforts and a new, inevitable step. How long we push off the latter is down to how fearful we may be. Those sounds of a spoon hitting the side of a coffee cup, who knows how many caffeine boosts deep Holter is for Evening Mood, but the rush of real life and the impact it has on creative output is real, fear-filled and inevitable. Hear the rambles of the quiet as Holter does through Something in the Room She Moves, an honest glimpse into a massive paradigm shift.