It’s appropriate that Loud City Song, Julia Holter’s third and best album in three years, opens with a song called “World,” as that is exactly what Holter creates for us throughout the course of the album. Starting with just her quiet voice floating in a vacuum of silence, she carefully puts all her pieces in place: the literary inspiration of Colette’s 1944 novella Gigi, her orchestral arrangements tuned up, and her layered voice at its best. It’s the most restrained song on the album, but immediately you can tell Loud City Song is the most exquisitely recorded album of Holter’s career. Holter’s voice transforms from song to song, as do her orchestrations. No two songs sound alike, but they all sound like Julia Holter, who in turn sounds like no one else. It’s a beautifully crafted and recorded piece of work, and for the first time it lives up to the grand and dreamy symphonies that always seemed to live in the artist’s head. –Miles [LISTEN]