I’ll admit it; I don’t really know how I feel about Julia Holter. On one hand, she sounds like Joanna Newsom’s ghost haunting a church in the year 3000, which is kind of a double-edged sword. Her first album, last year’s Tragedy (an able rival to Hello Sadness for the least subtly titled record of the year), was a little gem of that straddled the fine line between doomed pop and menacing drone-dance music being played several miles underwater. Apparently having learned a lesson or two last year, she’s recently put out her sophomore album, the infinitely more frustratingly titled Ekstasis.
There was certainly some fear in the back of my mind that Holter would go the Lana Del Rey route with this new album. That is, like a zeppelin adorned with too much hype, crashing into the ground, exploding horribly and starting a great number of things on fire. After all, Tragedy, for all its flaws, was a solid, well imagined debut—a perfect sign of an artist moments away from implosion. Ekstasis, at the very least, doesn’t do this—and thank God. It isn’t a rousing, heroic success like I’d hoped, but it is a well put together and frequently endearing follow-up.
I love comparisons as much as the next guy, so let’s get this started on the right foot; Ekstasis is what would happen if, legally and biologically, Joanna Newsom, Grimes, and Grouper were able to conceive a child. It’s as ambitious and bloated as anything Newsom has ever done. It’s got that weird neo-hip-hop vibe Grimes does so well and at its droniest moments it’s as spooky (if not even spookier) as Grouper’s pre-Dragging a Dead Deer releases.
That’s not to say it’s derivative—quite the contrary, this Frankensteinian freakshow is something morbidly unique. Look no farther than “Four Gardens” for proof—vocal whisps float over jangling keys that first swells into a chimy chorus and then explodes into saxophone squalls and then melts into a ghostly outro. I know that description was a mess, but you (probably) see what I’m getting at: Holter’s tunes are frequently big and amorphous, unconstrained by expectations and form. She’s been called ambient pop a lot lately, and I think that’s probably the most apt description. Tracks like “Our Sorrows” and “This is Ekstasis” (which, by the way, provides no insight as to what Ekstasis actually is) marry the trademarks of ambience—long passages of noise defined by absence and atmosphere—with the jangle of indie pop. And, for the most part, it works, and it works very well. But sometimes it doesn’t.
The problem with ambient pop is the exact same problem with ambient; if you listen long enough, everything ends up sounding exactly the same. Holter may have an ear for texture, but she’s still got a way to go as far as songwriting is concerned. There’s almost always a modest pop sensibility in the songs, (“Goddess Eyes I,” “Four Gardens” and “In the Same Room” in particular border on danceable), but aside from a merciless hook every few songs most of the tunes end up kind of mashing together into a big ambient smoothie.
Ekstasis is what it is—a sloppy and frequently flawed indication of genius yet to come. And, taken by its own merits, is a fantastic accomplishment for a flourishing new artist who definitely deserves attention in the years to come.
