it seems like a mighty long time
Antique velvet dress from the early 1940s that used to be my moms' (similar here), Opening Ceremony sheer long sleeve (similar here), Warby Parker glasses
Music is unlike any other medium of art because it has a sort of detachment quality. Like it takes you on voyages, and depending upon how much of yourself you throw into the songs, you can travel places that don't exist but in your mind alone. Loud City Song by Julia Holter is a concept album that in her mind is an exploration of Gigi, the film, short novel, and eventually the musical. Having never seen either the film or read the book, I admit that much of the record's symbolism is lost upon me - but you needn't understand the album's point of inspiration in order to allow it to take you on a journey.
Holter's sweeping compositions are given lift through her never-gimmicky usage of strings - the violins are velvety smooth as they fly, while the cello sits beneath each melody, humming along like wheels of a carriage. Her frantic trumpets and lonely trombones punctuate the airiness of the strings, but only in a deliberate manner; she has composed each song so deliberately that nothing ever feels hokey or contrived. Often a challenge in using symphonic instruments outside of a traditional symphonic setting is that their overall aesthetic can outweigh the mood of the music itself, but that simply isn't the case here. Julia Holter, who studied music composition, utilizes each instruments exactly as often as it needs to be used.
You could call the music "dreamy", but that would be lazy. Because her music isn't meant explicitly for dreams, it is also meant for the piercing pain of everyday life. "Horns Surrounding Me" is an anxious, tense piece with quivering trumpets and small-room vocals, so you feel your breath hasten along with hers. And "City Appearing" is your loneliness amplified, as you are perched on a fire escape held together by measly nuts and bolts. I think about about how she's managed to give sound to urban heartaches. Big cities can be crushing in their isolation. It is a very specific sort of loneliness that feeds on your soul, unique to populated places. Often you'll find yourself gazing out the window onto a sea of cars and people and snow and lights and wonder why- with so many lives concentrated in one place, each a potential human connection, why you spend nights alone on your couch, clutching a plastic glass filled with cheap wine, searching futilely for something on Netflix you haven't watched before.
"Hello Stranger" (it's a cover) makes me think of walking along Redondo Beach at that precise moment when the whole of the sun dips below the horizon, bathing the water and your skin in a purple glow, your eye straining for a few moments to adjust to the lack of light, the wind blowing your clothes about (in my mind it is something casual but airy, I suppose something like Jenny’s white outfit when she begins throwing rocks at her old home in Forrest Gump). Your skin ripples into tiny goosebumps, you can’t tell if it is from the arrival of the nighttime air or the tears welling in your eyes, and you don’t know why those tears are there, because the memory that brought them was so fleeting that you just as soon forgot you had even thought of it.
John, a person who tends towards restraint in conversation, once told me that music touches a place in your soul that no other form of art can – it’s on a different plane from visual art or film, because music generates associations between real and unreal memories (see Tavi’s post here about memories of things that never happened). If fragrances are the key to unlocking a long-buried memory of your childhood, music is the window into a world in which you didn't know you had dreamed of. Loud City Songfeels like a road my life could have gone – alone, cold, maybe in California, probably in New York, my mind swimming in ether, my heart tight in my chest, and a choice I almost made many years ago. How truly romantic music is, when it can give you a glimpse into a life you never lived.
Music is unlike any other medium of art because it has a sort of detachment quality. Like it takes you on voyages, and depending upon how much of yourself you throw into the songs, you can travel places that don't exist but in your mind alone. Loud City Song by Julia Holter is a concept album that in her mind is an exploration of Gigi, the film, short novel, and eventually the musical. Having never seen either the film or read the book, I admit that much of the record's symbolism is lost upon me - but you needn't understand the album's point of inspiration in order to allow it to take you on a journey.
Holter's sweeping compositions are given lift through her never-gimmicky usage of strings - the violins are velvety smooth as they fly, while the cello sits beneath each melody, humming along like wheels of a carriage. Her frantic trumpets and lonely trombones punctuate the airiness of the strings, but only in a deliberate manner; she has composed each song so deliberately that nothing ever feels hokey or contrived. Often a challenge in using symphonic instruments outside of a traditional symphonic setting is that their overall aesthetic can outweigh the mood of the music itself, but that simply isn't the case here. Julia Holter, who studied music composition, utilizes each instruments exactly as often as it needs to be used.
You could call the music "dreamy", but that would be lazy. Because her music isn't meant explicitly for dreams, it is also meant for the piercing pain of everyday life. "Horns Surrounding Me" is an anxious, tense piece with quivering trumpets and small-room vocals, so you feel your breath hasten along with hers. And "City Appearing" is your loneliness amplified, as you are perched on a fire escape held together by measly nuts and bolts. I think about about how she's managed to give sound to urban heartaches. Big cities can be crushing in their isolation. It is a very specific sort of loneliness that feeds on your soul, unique to populated places. Often you'll find yourself gazing out the window onto a sea of cars and people and snow and lights and wonder why- with so many lives concentrated in one place, each a potential human connection, why you spend nights alone on your couch, clutching a plastic glass filled with cheap wine, searching futilely for something on Netflix you haven't watched before.
"Hello Stranger" (it's a cover) makes me think of walking along Redondo Beach at that precise moment when the whole of the sun dips below the horizon, bathing the water and your skin in a purple glow, your eye straining for a few moments to adjust to the lack of light, the wind blowing your clothes about (in my mind it is something casual but airy, I suppose something like Jenny’s white outfit when she begins throwing rocks at her old home in Forrest Gump). Your skin ripples into tiny goosebumps, you can’t tell if it is from the arrival of the nighttime air or the tears welling in your eyes, and you don’t know why those tears are there, because the memory that brought them was so fleeting that you just as soon forgot you had even thought of it.
John, a person who tends towards restraint in conversation, once told me that music touches a place in your soul that no other form of art can – it’s on a different plane from visual art or film, because music generates associations between real and unreal memories (see Tavi’s post here about memories of things that never happened). If fragrances are the key to unlocking a long-buried memory of your childhood, music is the window into a world in which you didn't know you had dreamed of. Loud City Songfeels like a road my life could have gone – alone, cold, maybe in California, probably in New York, my mind swimming in ether, my heart tight in my chest, and a choice I almost made many years ago. How truly romantic music is, when it can give you a glimpse into a life you never lived.
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