Julia Holter has long been one for citing influences not normally found on the average popstar playlist: Euripides’s Hippolytus, for instance, or field recordings taken from the inside of old furniture stores. Have You in My Wilderness was no different in that respect – critics spotted traces of everything from 17th-century madrigals to the piano compositions of Maurice Ravel in this bewitching record, whereas Holter herself talked about the literary influence of Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories and Colette’s Chance Acquaintances.
Yet, having had a few months to absorb Have You in My Wilderness fully, it’s one of Holter’s more standard inspirations that appears most striking. Speaking to the Guardian earlier this year, Holter talked about Scott Walker’s masterful ballad Duchess, a love song so painterly, it captures light and poise, and even references “Rembrandt swells”.
Have You in My Wilderness felt similarly visual. Songs such as Silhouette appeared to be constructed not so much from chords and melodies as dotted with breathy sighs, gentle dabs of double bass and wild brushstrokes of violin. It was musical impressionism: every sonic detail felt carefully placed, yet the closer you studied it, the more you tried to pick it apart, the less clear the picture became.
As the title suggests, Have You in My Wilderness was a record that linked the otherworldly feeling of love – in all its beauty and trepidation – with the awe and mystery of nature. To match this theme musically, she conjured up her own exotic world in which free jazz and minimalist classical music sat alongside pop and poetry (Talk Talk’s later albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, spring to mind). It was music that could feel as enlivening as a sunrise, or as hazy as Monet’s renderings of Vétheuil.
Whereas Holter’s last album, Loud City Song, was deliberately abrasive in places, jolting and jarring you like urban life tends to, Have You in My Wilderness felt warmer and more wide-eyed. Lucette Stranded on the Island was a somnambulant blur of spoken word and woodwind, so dreamlike you almost expected Holter to suddenly appear at her old school, wearing no trousers and facing a maths exam she hadn’t revised for. Holter dismissed the notion that these were intensely personal songs – they were, she said, largely based on characters – but her style of singing certainly felt as if she was imparting intimate secrets, especially on the glowing Night Song. In places it could feel transcendental – the coda of How Long? in particular, reminiscent of religious choral music – whereas at other times, Holter appeared to throw herself into reckless abandon, thriving through the terror of her own lack of control (“Tell me why do I feel you’re running away,” she sings on the concluding title track).
Like St Vincent’s self-titled fourth album, which topped our poll last year, Have You in My Wilderness was the sound of an auteur (Holter is a classically trained pianist who studied at the California Institute of the Arts) daring to squeeze her avant garde tendencies into a pop template. Yet even the concise, hook-laden likes of Feel You and Sea Calls Me Home felt richer when consumed as part of the whole album, a work that invited you to take a step back and let the picture wash over you in full.
