Julia Holter @ Manchester Gorilla, 16 Feb

Julia Holter takes a sip from her glass, flashes a knowing smile: "Wine makes me sing better." She's not convinced but we're open to persuasion. Later, she recalls her previous visits to Manchester and pronounces us "good listeners." Four years since she played to "like, five people" at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Holter is suddenly huge: Gorilla is rammed. "I like five people. But I like this, too," she acknowledges.

Holter and her current touring setup (Dina Maccabee on violin, Devin Hoff on double bass and long-term drummer Corey Fogel) perform with an ecstatic freedom. They explore the opening City Appearing, from 2013's Loud City Song, for an age before Fogel's snare invigorates its closing passages. During set-closer Vasquez - the sprawling centrepiece of last year's Have You In My Wilderness – Holter leads her troupe down an extended improvisational side road. Part way through, a young woman at the front faints. The sweaty, airless room or simply the music? Either way, the band doesn't miss a beat.

And yet for all of their high-wire playfulness, they tend to the intimate demands of In the Green Wild, a soaring Feel You and an affectionate re-awakening of Dionne Warwick's Don't Make Me Over ("I'm gonna sing it heartfelt and bad") with precision and guile. Every note feels like a great adventure; every song, a challenge overcome. The songs arch and stretch and ascend. Breathless rhapsodies, fuelled by their own fearlessness, they bulge with unruly ambition: beyond words, beyond worlds.