Album Review: Julia Holter’s Aviary Absorbs A Melting World

You ever feel like you are the only one that feels? Like you are looking at a room full of people, and wondering, “Where is the heart? Who is alive in spirit?” Congratulations! You are a sensitive soul, and that is not a weakness, but it can leave you feeling weak. It is hard to be a beating heart amongst a sea of hardened ones, and Julia Holter’s Aviary is the testimony of a person working to stay soft. 

Yes, that is right! Soften your heart! Do not harden or close it off! Stay sensitive so that you can stay aware and open to life’s joy! That is both mine and Julia’s advice as her ethereal voice sings to the oblique natures in humanity. “Whether,” “I Would Rather See,” and “Why Sad Song?” are just a few examples of Holter’s capacity to turn inner thoughts into poetry. While most of us chop our inner mind with fragmented stresses and half-sentences on what we half-feel about a situation; Holter Van Gogh’s her feelings. She turns the mind’s insanity into poesy, and allows you to see how you should rethink the “tortured artist.”

So often, we see the “tortured artist” as a beacon of intrigue, but the truth is that self-destruction is not artful living. Yet, there are degrees to “torture” or self-loathing, and the best artists are the ones that know how to transfer pain into art rather than the usual blockade we let it be within us. Holter does this throughout Aviary; turning its soundscapes into Impressionist art. She magnifies turmoils into fantastical versions such as, “Turn The Light On” or “In The Gardens Muteness.” It is was if you are failing into Van Gogh’s Starry Night , and from “Another Dream” to “Les Jeux To You,” you have to figure out whether you can grab a cloud, clutch a star, or hold on to the night sky itself just stop feeling like you are falling. 

There are many reasons for why sadness, stress, or relationship struggles can feel rough. One of them is that they do not stop. You can’t take a water break when you see a lover or a dream not going your way, which is why I love how enveloping Holter’s stringed arraignments can be. Moreover, she stretches and wells her voice to, again, you desire to move forward, but your realization that transferring your pain into poetry takes soulful work. For More Information On Julia Holder And To Buy Aviary Click Here.