Holt Pop

Julia Holter would be categorised, by the world, as an 'indie musician'. Born from the same Los Angeles scene as Ariel Pink, Geneva Jacuzzi, Nite Jewel et. al., Holter makes a kind of conceptual synth-pop, in which she explores thematic ideas across whole albums. Yet, Holter doesn't see herself as an 'indie musician'. Schooled in both classical and modern composition, first at the University of Michigan and then at CalArts, she sees herself as a composer. “I think of myself as a composer,” says Holter. “I like to leave myself open to lots of different projects. I've recently been writing a lot of songs, and I think that that will continue, but if I call myself a songwriter it feels quite limiting. I don't think of myself as a project, I think of each of my albums as projects. Which means that every work I undertake can be radically different from the others, but it will still fall under my name because it is a work that I have done.”

Her first record was a cassette, Eating The Stars, which was filled with giddy, fizzing, fuzzy, semi-Francophone synth-pop; a self-pressed CDR, 2008's Cookbook, showed the other extreme of her compositional interests, the album a single-take, 'performed' field-recording of meal preparation. Holter didn't see the two pursuits —one more lowbrow and accessible, the other highbrow and conceptual— as being two separate, conflicting things; more experiments in different fields of interest. When she played keyboards and sung sweet songs, she wasn't being a 'songwriter', but a composer trying their hand.

“One of the good things about studying music was the way it helped me learn, how it challenged me,” Holter says. “I'm a very intuitive writer, so I didn't need to go to school; I could've happily gone off and written music by myself. But in that collegiate setting, I had to really open myself up to other ways of working, and other possibilities; and that's something I'm really thankful for. When I was studying music, I started out as someone who was just working behind the scenes, I don't think of myself as a singer. I come out onto the stage if I want to, but if I do it it's as a performance, and not just as me.”

That sense of theatricality —and of careful, compositional approach— is all over her first two 'proper' albums, 2011's Tragedy and 2012's Ekstasis. The albums form Holter's career narrative both in its upward-ascent basics —Tragedy the one to catch critical ears, Ekstasis the essential breakout— and in the way they reveal her musical approach, and sense of ambition. And they work together as essential pair; a set of 'sister' albums that riff on a central song, Goddess Eyes.

The squelchy, robotic lament, Goddess Eyes, was like a three-minute 'pop' song amidst the album's grander pieces. “I actually was just going to make a 7”,” she recounts, “but then it became an EP, and then it became an album. It was never intended to be something so expansive.”

Ekstasis was met with across-the-board acclaim (the possibly-evil consensus-creator Metacritic calculates it in 2012's 20 best-reviewed LPs), and took Holter, the indie musician as composer, into a realm where her music suddenly became her occupation. “I am very happy right now, because for the first time ever, I'm just doing music,” Holter beams. “[But] being a jack-of-all-trades is a mixed blessing. And, musically, if you define yourself as just being yourself, then I think your music can suffer; because even if you have the skill to do everything yourself, you're missing out on the benefits of collaboration, in keeping your music open to different ideas. Musically, I've really been lucky so far in that I've allowed my name to cover a lot of territory; so Julia Holter doesn't just mean me on stage; I could be performing with a friend, or any number of other musicians. I could be doing anything.”

Julia Holter will be playing the following dates:

Tuesday 5 February - The Toff In Town, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday 6 February - Uniting Chruch, Paddington NSW
Friday 8 February - Laneway Festival, Adelaide SA
Saturday 9 February - Laneway Festival, Perth WA