Julia Holter at Aisle 5, Atlanta - July 21, 2019

As surprising as it seems, Julia Holter had not performed in Atlanta before last night.  She's been producing great music for at least 10 years now, but for some reason or another, her tours have never brought her to the ATL.  That oversight was rectified last night at Aisle 5.

Before getting into it, opening support was provided by L.A. ambient artist Ana Roxanne, whose name always sounded like the word "anorexic" whenever it was said on stage.  Her stage banter sounded like a cry for help, like she was saying "Hi, I'm Anorexic."

But joking aside, she's a great artist and performed a wonderful set of meditative ambiance that had the entire audience spellbound and quietly attentive.  Here's a sample:

She closed her set with a slowed-down version of Smoky Robinson's already leisurely paced Ooh, Baby Baby, which was almost unrecognizable in Roxanne's ambient format until she got to the iconic title line.

That was a nice way to start the show, but Julia Holter's ensemble took the evening to a whole other dimension.  Words really aren't adequate to describe the complex beauty of her ambitious art rock.  The music was at times cacophonous and discordant, at times it sounded like a baroque string ensemble, and at other times it sounded orchestral and triumphant.  Most of the time was spent on the full spectrum of sound between those points.  

Honestly, we really don't have the words to describe her music, so we'll let it speak for itself in just a minute. but first we'll just note that Holter, on keyboards and vocals, fronted a sextet that included violin, trumpet, a second keyboard, bass, and drums.  All were superb musicians, and the complex compositions were obviously well rehearsed, but Sarah Belle Reid especially deserves credit for her outstanding work pushing the boundaries of the expression that's possible from a trumpet and flugelhorn.

The club was full and the audience was clearly appreciative of the chance to finally hear Holter live, and gave her music their quiet attention as well as the thunderous applause that it deserved.

Most of the songs were from Holter's outstanding 2018 LP Aviary, and she closed the set with I Shall Love 2 from that album.  The song takes its time building from the very simplest, but still captivating, opening to the surprising and ecstatic choral crescendo that climaxes the song.

And lest we leave you with the impression that is what Holter's set sounded like for any more than that one song, here's another video from her KEXP performance of another piece, Chaitius, also from the Aviary LP, that ranges from baroque strings, to Bjorkian orchestration, to jazz lounge, to triumphant pop, all in the course of one very well composed and coherent song.

We're not likely to hear a more ambitiously artistic set of music this year.  By the end of the evening, we were thoroughly entertained as well as artistically uplifted.