Welcome to the island of Aldous Harding. You’re free to leave at any time, but our New Zealand artists will be happy to guide you. there is no palm tree This is probably the tree she used to climb when she was a child. Forget the feeling of floating in the blue sea. Instead, indulge in questions like, “When I fell into the ocean, I was just a spark/Who pulled me up to the trunk with no love in my heart?” They have to survive by eating rocks and plants, but they can also dance just for the sake of dancing. I can get together with friends once in a while, but of course in the end it’s just me and my reflection. “I found myself sleeping / I’m left behind by what she knows / I hope I’m more than I know,” Harding sings toward the end of her closed-off but charming new album. island trainfollows notable events in 2022 warm chris. The train is symbolic of It seems natural, but she follows it to its roots, subconsciously leaning into the pure, delicious, incomprehensible feeling that bubbles up. It’s okay if you don’t understand the language. Please try riding it anyway.
1. I ate the most.
For those who like to dismiss Harding’s music as insubstantial, the singer-songwriter offers an origin story. “I was nine years old when I left my body,” she sings. The Chronicles of Narnia She likes to sting and surprise with her similes, and is more interested in mind games than wordplay, as she likes to sting and surprise with her similes, and is troubled by the ripple effects of her childhood anxieties. (“Steve Abel thinks I’m autistic,” she said Posted 14 years ago. Now she jokes, “You’re not getting old, like I’m on the spectrum.” ) Rather than burying them completely, she sings as if she is tilting her head, vocalizing the burden of trauma like a chip on her shoulder. Thomas Poli and H. Hoechlein’s slimy synthesizers aren’t very divine, but they seem to satisfy her longing to lift her feet off the ground and fly.
2. One stop
The lead single’s looped piano motif enhances this uplifting feeling with layers of acoustic guitar, bass, harp, and electronics. Harding nervously throws himself into the role of an unreliable narrator (“So the lies I tell cheer me up”), but his humorous encounter with John Cale sounds entirely plausible. She’s always eerily funny, but the opening one-two punch sets up the album almost like a comedy special, even if it’s driven entirely by impulse.
3. Train on the island
It turns out the joke was just a step, and now the same tropes that made this record so relatable just haunt you. “My mom told me that the beginning of my life was like eating pearls.” Harding reverts to his diaristic, insular personality, and is less keen to turn his observations into entertainment, such as “I don’t like the way I perceive myself, but the drugs make me dumb.” There’s not much love in her voice. But backed by Hawkline’s hypnotic bass lines and evocative electric guitar, she continues to captivate listeners.
4. Worm
With the help of Joe Harvey-White’s pedal steel, the record becomes even more languid, but the understated hooks still leave a tingling – for lack of a better word – in your head. This is where the weight begins to feel, but Harding temporarily finds comfort in the contradiction. “The wonderful things inside have been dormant long enough.” Will they still not haunt? Are they still sitting there, obsessing over her stream of consciousness?
5. Zinnia Venus
This early single is a mesmerizing duet with Hawkline, also featuring a fun Wurlitzer solo from Parrish, and spotlights the album’s key collaborators. No wonder this song sounds like the most social track on the LP. Usually when Harding’s music is this refreshing, it’s at odds with the subject matter, but that’s less the case here, as every gathering of friends should be, if only because it’s hard to tell what it’s about.
6. If Ready Does It
With Seb Rochford playing drums, Parrish on bass, and harpist Mari Llywelyn swapping piano lines alongside Hawkline, the drums immediately jump out with more life than on much of the record. This serves to switch up the energy of the record, giving the more traditionally structured songs the full band treatment. But Harding seems more concerned with that than with bringing his own version of a murder mystery to life. “If I’m a gun, I’m loaded with bullets,” she declares, barely lifting the veil of abstraction. None of the melodies on this record are more coherent or more sinister than the outro, which repeats like a protest chant.
7. San Francisco
Listening to “San Francisco” suddenly makes you wonder how these songs are connected. Especially since the hook of “One Stop” is played again just when you think the song is over. The music becomes subdued again, and Harding narrates in a morning daze, until the playing on the Fender Rhodes turns violent and he begins to suspect that the man “from Folsom” is not just a newcomer with a new bag. On the other hand, the earnest intimacy of her voice is the most gentle, and the line, “I’ve never been a believer, and I don’t cry even if you say that,” is truly an eye-opening line. And at that moment, it evaporates.
8. What are you going to do?
Over a thrashing rhythm section, Harding sinks into the lower register, juxtaposing some of her weirdest lyrics (“Béchamel on my face”) with the oddly hopeful refrain, “I know things aren’t going well/But maybe they’ll be okay later.” Llywelyn’s harp drives the song, culminating in a wonderfully unconventional solo.
9. Riding on that symbol
Every Aldous Harding record requires a daunting, lonely, existential ballad, and the acoustic “Riding That Symbol” is this album’s equivalent of “Sheal Be Coming Round the Mountain.” “The thing that would haunt me” no longer has a future tense, and it becomes a “ghost.” [that] It’s a band, so that’s not a coincidence. ” The spare instrumentation reflects her detached headspace. “No one knows what I’m into/I’m just riding the symbol.” Mind fog permeates Thomas Poli’s bed of electronics.
10. Coat
Harding isn’t one for outright resolve, but there’s something to be said for her closing with another summery song in the vein of “Venus in the Zinnia.” “I can’t buy the medicine, but I’ll eat it if you’re next to me,” she sings with Hawkline, and it’s both a full-circle moment and a frankly well-chosen line about the eating disorders encoded in the opening track. It may be easy for Harding to follow that line, but there is a sense that understanding where you come from and how the dots are connected is not the door to salvation. “I wonder what my God is thinking, I’m lost there,” Harding sings earlier. island train It’s just her means of transportation. Thank God it’s public.
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
