Julia Holter - Have You in My Wilderness LP

After drawing on Greek tragedies and MGM musicals for her earlier albums, it would be hard for Julia Holter to find loftier sources of inspiration. On Have You in My Wilderness, she resizes her ambition to a more intimate scale. If her previous album, Loud City Song, had the heft of a novel, this one plays like a collection of short stories. Holter remains as literary as ever on these songs; her influences include Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories -- on the torchy "How Long," she takes a sultry, Sally Bowles-meets-Nico turn -- as well as the novella Chance Acquaintances by Colette, whose Gigi begat Loud City Song. Wilderness' bite-sized approach makes it easier to savor the breathtaking beauty of Holter's music, and fits her meditations on closeness and distance. The "you" and "me" implied in the album title are united, and separated, by unpredictable emotions ("Show me how you make your second face," she urges a lover on "Night Song"). While songs like the charming opener "Fe