The first time we saw bewildering Milwaukee songwriter Julia Holter was at the Komedia some six years ago, not long after she’d signed to Domino Records for her third album proper ‘Loud City Song’. Our memories of that first Brighton gig are of a sedate, intimate cabaret affair but her sound has expanded greatly since then. So has her band, big enough to fill The Old Market tonight with music that sweeps and crashes by turn. Last year’s lengthy fifth album ‘Aviary’ is broad in sound and ambitious in scope, exploring deeper into territories pioneered by Kate Bush and Dead Can Dance, and the live show demands concentration and surrender.
She starts alone, restrained, stood singing at her keyboard for ‘In Garden’s Muteness’. As her vocal intensity increases, she hammers out rigid one-note piano lines, retaining our focus while her five-piece group set up on stage behind her. It’s her first British date of the year and she’s happy to be back in Brighton, or near enough. “I’m trying something special and new, just because I like… Hove” she announces, bringing her next song to a halt to try out different keyboard sounds and switching her set around to accommodate songs not played for some time, such as her gentle cover of Barbara Lewis’ rhythm and blues ballad ‘Hello Stranger’ (a 1963 hit in the US, lesser known on these shores).
Alongside its rhythm section – the sliding jazz pairing of double bassist Andrew Jones and percussionist Corey Fogel – the defining features of the band are trumpet player Sarah Belle Reid and violinist and vocalist Dina Maccabee, whose instruments intertwine and engage in conversation with Holter’s singing. ‘Underneath The Moon’ sees synth player Tashi Wada switch to bagpipes midway, breathing out sustained drones to thicken the mix of the band’s dense sound and Holter’s powerful voice.
The conflicting voices and overlapping sounds of ‘Aviary’ reflect the cacophony of the current political age, so when Holter announces she’s going to play a song “that feels relevant to right now, in a very superficial way” we wonder if she’s about to pass comment on the big news of the week, Trump’s divisive state visit. Instead, she dips back into a welcome ‘Sea Calls Me Home’ (from 2015’s ‘Have You In My Wilderness’), in honour of our nearness to the water.
We end with the defiant chants of ‘I Shall Love 2’, a quick as possible encore of its more percussive companion ‘I Shall Love 1’ and the softer ‘Betsy On The Roof’. Unusually, despite the adoring audience response throughout the show, Holter seems to end the evening more nervous than she began, laughing off with embarrassment a crowd request for ‘Vasquez’, claiming she’s still “not used” to people knowing her songs.
Such oddball energy and emotional wrong-footing is all part of Holter’s beguiling, baffling appeal. We leave buffeted by her music and blown away by her voice, no wiser than before about where her muse will take her next.
The Old Market, Monday 3rd June 2019
Words by Stuart Huggett
Photos by Mike Tudor
