Julia Holter is a baroque songwriter for the twenty-first century. Her previous albums, though beautiful and ambitious, have always been slightly too impenetrable for me to fully love. Have You in My Wilderness is far more accessible, fusing Holter's chamber music influences and precise, classical compositions with more pop-leaning structures and big, exuberant choruses. However, Holter's ingenuity is not watered down or simplified in the slightest. In fact, her songwriting has never been better, squeezing all the cinematic expanse of her earlier work into perfectly compact pop songs. Each of the album's ten tracks is like a mini-symphony, full to the brim with romantic lyricism, intricate instrumental arrangements, melodic turns that will leave you breathless, and, of course, presiding confidently over it all, Holter's warm, resonant soprano.

Pre-release singles "Feel You" and "Sea Calls Me Home" are as catchy and addictive as you would expect any good pop song to be. The playful lilt of Holter's voice, which has previously been embedded more deeply in the instrumentation, is at the forefront, accompanied equally by traditional instrumentation (keyboards, drums, bass) and more unconventional choices that speak to her baroque inspiration (strings, harpsichord, saxophone). The songs' dreamy syncopation and sweeping arrangements are complemented by their lyrics, which are as clever ("The time change worked well/I had a good excuse for being late") as they are enigmatic ("I can't swim/It's lucidity/So clear!").

The end of "Feel You" offers the first of many delightfully surprising moments on the album: through a tangle of strings and handclaps, Holter delivers a charming monologue about perfumes in parking lots and people playing saxophones. The final minute of "Silhouette" is equally unexpected, the breezy lightness of its verses blurring into a vibrant, overlapping chaos of violin and voice. Other tracks burn fiercely but slowly, like the smokily seductive "How Long?" and the shuddering, plaintive "Night Song," full of sensual poeticism: "I throw a boxful of oranges/Syrup seeping out/Searching for a season smell." The closing title track fits into this group as well, with its romantic pronouncements ("Lady of gold, you would fit beautiful in my wilderness/Oh, in your waters I've dropped anchor") and rich, atmospheric musical accompaniment.

The album's undeniable centerpiece, though, is the six-minute "Betsy on the Roof," a haunting ballad stripped down to the basics of piano and voice, its sparseness highlighting Holter's natural ear for melody and the nuance and dynamism of her voice, capable of imbuing multiple meanings into a single line. At the midway point, it segues into an intensely yearning arrangement of piano, strings, and percussion that slowly unravels into dark, mangled dissonance as Holter's wordless desperation is alternated with the impassioned demand, "I'm standing here on the ground, Betsy/My arms stretched out/Looking up/Won't you please tell me the answer?/You know the answer, Betsy." It feels like everything in Holter's catalogue has been building to this moment, and the release is immense. The fact that it's surrounded by nine tracks that very nearly match its quality is merely icing on the cake.