Julia Holter @ Cathedral, Manchester, 15 Nov

Julia Holter is evidently impressed by her surroundings tonight. Her last couple of visits to Manchester took her to Gorilla, back in February, and the Deaf Institute almost three years ago to the day, and lovely as they both are, it’s still difficult to compete with the city’s cathedral for sweeping majesty – even if much of Holter’s backdrop this evening is encaged in scaffolding. More important are the acoustics that the room offers; with pillars dotting the church’s expansive floor, sightlines are never going to be great, but the fact that the cathedral provides a terrifically faithful sonic sounding board for every aspect of Holter’s set tonight is really its great triumph.

As is to be expected of the Californian pop maverick by now, it’s a performance that runs the stylistic gamut. A host of cuts from last year’s rapturously-acclaimed Have You in My Wilderness, including opener Lucette Stranded on the Island, are largely faithful to their originals, thanks in no small part to Holter’s small but prodigiously-talented backing band. It’s on older cuts, particularly those from debut full-length Tragedy, that Holter digresses, flitting between post-rock and out-and-out drone. This is not an artist unduly burdened by pressure to adhere to some kind of mainstream aesthetic.

And you know what? Quite right. It’s Holter’s ability to delve into pop territory leftfield enough to exclude most of her contemporaries that makes her work so vital. There’s an operatic intensity to it that makes surroundings as dramatic as these evenings the perfect foil, but really, we should be taking songwriting as ambitious as this any way we can get it.