Julia Holter works in spirals. In The Same Room, a live studio album recorded over two days at RAK Studios in London, is mostly comprised of reinterpretations of the Los Angeles artist's beautiful 2016 LP, Have You In My Wilderness, occasionally blending in tracks from her 2013 cult classic Loud City Song and 2011 debut Tragedy. But that's all right-angle thinking. Holter's always been fascinated by acoustics and their imperfections—her first release, Live Recordings, is an engrossing mash of the synthetic and organic, songs played loudly in a room next door with radio transmissions butting in. In The Same Room captures that odd grandeur in a more straightforward fashion, with Holter behind the piano, minimal backup, and a microphones in front of it all. On Loud City Song, "Horns Surrounding Me" led with its rattles and synths, but here it's graceful and soft, with swelling strings and a grand piano and Holter's voice in a whisper, not a cry. "Vasquez" is uncluttered with its bass now out of the water and the drums more clear and assertive in their quick-fire jazz fills. If you really want to follow the loop, there's "Betsy on the Roof" which started on Live Recordings with a microphone's white noise and Holter's compressed voice buried in the buzz; on ...Wilderness it became a howling lament fit for an gilded, empty ballroom; here, it's hushed and melancholy, sung through a jilted character who's moved passed agony and into some melancholy reminiscence. — Alex Robert Ross | LISTEN: Spotify, Apple Music