Julia Holter - In The Same Room

Live albums are divisive by their very nature, so it bodes well for Domino’s new series that they’ve managed to find a novel way of approaching the idea. The thinking behind Documents is to catch artists mid-tour not on stage, but in a London studio in order to capture high-quality recordings of the songs not as they were first time around, but in the form they’ve evolved to over the course of their time on the road.

In that respect, Julia Holter is a perfect first subject (on paper, anyway - the label are at pains to point out that last year’s Villagers LP ‘Where Have You Been All My Life?’ is spiritually the series’ opening instalment). Julia is an experimental musician and there’s a strong suspicion that she pays very little heed to how difficult, or otherwise, she might find it to figure out how her songs will work in the live arena.

Cut at RAK Studios in London, ‘In the Same Room’ is a fascinating insight into the sheer fluidity of Julia’s approach. The arrangements aren’t wildly different from their recorded originals, but it’s the vibrancy with which they’re sonically captured that stands out. The likes of ‘Feel You’, ‘Silhouette’ and ‘How Long?’ are all pretty faithful, but have a brightness and sharpness that feels like a rebuke to their ethereal studio blueprints.

Elsewhere, she exercises restraint on live favourite ‘In the Green Wild’, choosing not to descend into jazzy freakout territory as she sometimes does on stage. The result is a taut, tense iteration. The highlight, meanwhile, is ‘Betsy on the Roof’, strings and piano dovetailing gorgeously to imbue the atmosphere with palpable drama. Julia Holter is never going to be to everybody’s tastes and there’s a minimalism in places here that even ardent fans might find a touch disappointing given how predisposed she normally is to extrapolating on her ideas. In fairness, though, the whole point of Documents is to capture the sound of a band, still hot from the road, bringing that energy to the studio. ‘In the Same Room’ delivers.