Today, Julia Holter has shared “My Lost One,” which is the enchanting new single from her forthcoming album, Materia, that will be out on August 21, through Domino. “My Lost One’ is witchy folktale inspired by children’s books with creepy rhymes and nonsense syllables, trees growing through living rooms, and animals doing things in clothes,” says Holter. “I imagine wildlife moving into my home, a superimposition of the outdoors and the indoors. I think about a squirrel cooking a meal on my stove. What are we conjuring, and what are we truly longing for?”
As for the artist’s upcoming album, Materia is only seven tracks long but Holter works in nearly that many modes here. There is the slowed “Materia” and the version reimagined for two voices, of course, but there are also two tracks that spooled out of the DAW project files and full band she built for Something. There are two astounding improvisations: one where she manipulates her voice so that each word seems to contain symphony and another that is one of Materia’s most spellbinding and emotional pieces, “My Twin,” from which Holter lifted a riff to build the song “Fantasy.” These seven songs show that Holter is among her generation’s most open writers of art-pop, moving among ideas and idioms with exploratory aplomb. Materia is kind of playground for Holter, where each distinct scene steadily coheres into a moving whole.
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