Julia Holter - Have You in My Wilderness

Have You In My Wilderness is Julia Holter's most intimate album yet, a collection of radiant ballads. Her follow-up to 2013's widely celebrated Loud City Song explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. While love songs are familiar fodder in pop music, Holter manages to stay fascinatingly oblique and enigmatic on her new album. Have You in My Wilderness is also Holter's most sonically intimate album. Here, she and producer Cole Marsden Greif-Neill lift her voice out of the layers of smeared, hazy effects, putting her vocals front and center in the mix. The result is striking-it sounds as if Holter is singing right in your ear. It sounds clear and vivid, but also disarmingly personal. The focused warm sound and instrumentation - dense strings, subtle synthesizer pads - adds to the effect.