NL premiere

Julia Holter’s dreamlike art pop, chameleonic and chimeric, is hard to pin down under a single definition. It wanders, it floats, it welcomes you in, and then it flits away back to the strange world from which it came, taking a piece of you with it. A broad spectrum of emotions and sounds crowd her songs, from the forlorn chamber-pop excellence of her breakout album Have You in My Wilderness (2015) – where her immaculate songwriting and singing wove into an unprecedented, moving whole – to its darker art pop follow-up Aviary (2018) – which veered into stranger territory of clambering orchestral swirls, daunted dissonance, and cavernous minimalism. Holter returns to Rewire to perform brand new music from her latest album. With this recent music, Holter speaks of “being brought out of [her] comfort zone – into the unknown, playfulness and chaos.” The single “Sun Girl” is a hazy, bongo-driven synth pop sleeper radiating with reverb and delay. In an ongoing state of evolution across her performances and recordings, Holter’s new direction is an exciting one, recalling the folksy power-pop experimentation of the 1970s while projecting the could-be future-pop of the 2070s.