Hi, everyone. Meathany Pactano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Julia Holter album, Something in the Room She Moves.

This is a brand new LP from the singer, composer, producer, songwriter, Ms Julia Holter, who continues to expand her fantastical and wondrous discography with another studio album, dragging us deeper into the forest, pulling us higher into the clouds. If you've heard this woman's music before, your ears have touched the astral plane, whether it's the overwhelming Ekstasis, or the nuanced and dreaming Loud City Song, or the near perfect Have You In My Wilderness, each record from Julia has gotten more and more ambitious, which was also the case for her last full-length Aviary, a record that was equally dazzling and unruly with it sitting at 90 minutes in length.

This thing just did not know when to quit, and I'm not necessarily saying that as a good thing because for a musician of Julia's style, a 90-minute record is impressive and also a gift, but it was not a very focused 90 minutes, I'll say that. But she has managed to cut things down quite a bit for this new full-length LP while still challenging herself artistically with a record whose title is very clearly a nod to the popular Beatles song of a title for some reason.

However, Julia's intentions on a record, I tend not to overthink as it does usually get in the way of the enchantment. Pretty much what Julia hits us with right from the start on this album, with the first track, "Sun Girl," a song whose instrumental palate is almost beyond description, with detuned music box melodies, as well as woodwinds that sound like birds, chirping and tweeting, some airy keyboard cords, loose scattered bits of hand percussion and these hulking, just massive groaning bass notes. The dynamic range this record is hitting us with right off the bat is incredible. And on top of all of this, Julia is singing these meditative, hypnotic refrains with this nearly expressionless inflection where she sounds as if she is a figment of my imagination in a dream state calling out to me. I mean, dreams literally as a theme turn up in the lyrics, "My dreams as I dream in golden yellow / my dreams as I dream in golden yellow."

And let me say this track has quite a strange structure as well. I know on Aviary, this is something Julia was experimenting with quite a bit. There were some songs that I think going in a linear or winding or just more out there direction didn't quite work.I think she is nailing it here. As every change on this track is engaging, whether we're getting a noisy break, a groove switch. I think the song is just a show of how much Julia's talents have brought her to a place where she's just not constrained by typical song structure anymore, typical anything.

We hear the range of adventure that presents deeper into the tracklist, whether you're talking about "Me, You," which is a experimental avant-garde choral piece, which I'm not crazy about as the pacing on these kinds of compositions tends to kill me. However, if you are a big John Cage or Björk Madula fan, I think you are going to get a lot out of this.

There's also "Ocean," which is an immersive instrumental piece where Julia blurs the lines between drone and classical composition. And as long as I'm mentioning surprise highlights, let me also point out the song "Spinning," which has these skipping looped grooves that grab my attention instantly. With all these progressive electronic synth layers laced into the mix, this is easily one of the most intricate and also most material compositions Julia has hit us with in a while. It's rare she comes through with a track that feels and sounds this direct, too, which is refreshing not only because it's done well, but it displays a certain contrast in Julia's work, as I think much of the magic in it is in that it lies just beyond clarity or objective interpretation. Just like the title of the album, it sounds vaguely like something that we know all too well, and yet it's not. It is not that thing. The esthetics of it just come across as an art piece or a sound or something that is painfully familiar, but instead it's just a surreal revision or manipulation of that idea of that feeling.

Now, speaking of familiarity, though, there are familiar moments on the record that feel like they could have landed on at least a few previous Julia projects, but now she's building on a lot of these sounds and ideas that we've known her for up until this point. The song "These Morning," I think, is another example of this where Julia is once again bringing together elements of dreamy ambient pop with the stark jazzy embellishments you would catch in the soundtrack to a film noir mystery.

Meanwhile, "Evening Mood" is proof that Julia is just one of the best to do this art pop thing in the modern era, taking the otherworldly esthetics you would catch on a Kate Bush album, for example, and bringing them to conclusions that are just the definition of marvelous.

The record also comes to a very interesting finish, too, as Julia's songs and compositions introduce a lot of dissonant instrumental passages, more fiery performances, more instrumental chaos. "Talking to the Whisper" has an absolutely blazing horn solo across the bridge, not to mention the free jazz finish on the track, too.

Meanwhile, "Who Brings Me" is like a calm after that storm, more of a somber ballad with a very, very, very dour chord progression and a lot of eerie imagery coming off the lyrics, too. While I don't think this record contains the most cohesive tracklist Julia has done so far, with maybe the weakest point on the album being "Materia," because this track, while it is pretty on the surface, does feel short and underdeveloped in comparison every other track here. Though I still took quite a bit away from Julia's poetry on love on this track, which made for one of the most straightforward and lucid statements on the entire LP.

Still, I was just blown away by the beauty of this record, how immaculate it sounds, how immersive and challenging and daring it is while simultaneously being pretty in a very accessible way. I see this project as not just a great record for Julia, but just a fantastic record as far as what I've heard so far throughout the year, because Julia is just bringing a level of talent and artfulness and conceptuality that you're not often hearing on a lot of records these days, which is why I'm feeling a strong a to a light 9 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Julia Holter. Forever.