Album Review: Julia Holter - Aviary

Music seems to be an escape for Julia Holter. Rather than dwell on personal affairs, her albums tend to be wrapped up in themes such as Greek tragedies or black and white movies. Despite her breakthrough coming with Have You In My Wilderness, a concise suite of unconnected songs, Aviary plunges back into Holter's escapist fantasies, specifically "the cacophony of the mind in a melting world" imagined as "an aviary of shrieking birds".

Focusing less on conventional songs, Aviary is a 90-minute journey through ornate aural labyrinths, majestically constructed with harps, pipes and Holter's cool, crystalline piano which is spellbinding on Les Jeux To You. Colligere is a veritable sound palace where a shimmering arrangement of strings, keys and trumpet crafts a refuge from this weary world. Standing out is the emotional crescendo of I Shall Love 2 which layers Holter's vocals into a tidal wave that swells until it becomes unstable and crashes in a grand, cathartic collapse.

Aviary may lack the breezy tunefulness of her breakthrough, but it's an album you can truly get lost in.