Aldous Harding’s voice contains multitudes, and you can never quite predict which character you’re going to get. Will it be the portentous priestess of “Horizon” or the fragile troubadour of “Warm Chris”? The haughty diva of “Fever” or the weird coquette of “Lawn”, or maybe those multiple personalities of “Leathery Whip”? Across Harding’s albums, but particularly since finding her idiosyncratic voice(s) on her second album, 2017’s Party, she has let the muse flow in diverse directions and bottled what comes out, considering herself more “song actor” than musician.
The same goes for her free-range lyrics, pleasingly odd clashes of maxims, allusions and observations that sometimes coalesce into a semblance of a story which sort of makes sense if you squint at it the right way, but also doesn’t have to. It’s the visual poetry that’s going to get under your skin.
If Harding knows what her songs are about, she’s certainly not telling. Following these breadcrumbs with her is producer John Parish, her studio wingman since Party. Parish has previous, of course, working with the shape-shifting PJ Harvey, but this is innovation of a different order, less visceral and elemental, more intimate and often accompanied by videos of Harding’s untutored but engaging interpretative dancing. She has leaned into that offbeat humour more on successive albums, shifting ever so slightly leftwards from those moody singer-songwriter beginnings while taking her expanding audience with her.
The economic playfulness of her 2022 album Warm Chris brought her some bona fide chart success in her native New Zealand and she’s radio-ready with the first cut from Train On The Island. Taster single “One Stop” is the earworm of the album, a freewheeling odyssey with natural wit spilling out over an instrumental backdrop of stately stride piano-meets-Vince Guaraldi minimalism. Harding’s fresh yet beseeching vocal melody makes an odd observation – “I met the real John Cale, he had no words but I don’t mind/ I packed the stage while he ate rice” – sound like the most natural narrative progression. From here, she skips around distractedly over the chorus, distending and deepening her voice as a languidly strummed guitar takes over and she pushes the track into folk-pop ecstasy.
She is joined for the ride by a coterie of musicians well versed in shooting off in unexpected but satisfying directions, not least instinctive drummer Seb Rochford and Huw Evans, who has forged his own career as H Hawkline and one-time foil of Cate Le Bon. Here he lifts and lays an armoury of instruments in service to Harding’s singular imagination.
Train On The Island opens with the sage, scratchy “I Ate The Most”, which appears to be a tale of pre-pubescent bulimia, encapsulating the distorted rewards and emotional bargaining of the illness (“I can prove that I ate the most ’cos I did”). Harding lays her claustrophobic scene over the opposites-attract combination of mellow Fender Rhodes piano and clackety percussion. You’ll want to come up for air by the end, and there’s plenty of creative oxygen around to suck on.
Harding sounds sultry on the opaque nostalgia of the title track, picking her way gingerly on piano before settling on some plangent chords, then suffusing the dulcet chorus with languorous pedal steel. She uses the conversational lower end of her vocal range for the husky, low-key storytelling of “Worms”, elegantly stretching out over electric piano and muted pedal steel like Chrissie Hynde on a New Age retreat.
“Venus In The Zinnia” is a cute duet with Evans, blending impressionistic poetry and cut-up lyrics with a hint of bossa nova, the pleasing chug of indie guitar and some subtle piano riffs dropped into the mix. “If Lady Does It” is an exercise in impishness, deftly changing pace and tone, back and forth between rolling rhythms and a more conventional blushing ballad. There is a Kate Bush elasticity to Harding’s register, like she’s playing ping-pong with the angel and devil on her shoulders.
In contrast, “San Francisco” is a (relatively) conventional troubadour trip with alt.country seasoning. Harding transitions from alto drawl on the verses to a breathy soprano interlude before going all-out Joni with the folky melisma of the inviting lines, “Why wouldn’t I want to meet you/Why wouldn’t I want to hold ya?”
“What Am I Gonna Do?” is a groovy melange of shuffling drums, glistening electric piano and a tinkling harp coda from Mali Llywelyn, with Harding’s voice so low it almost sounds like it’s been pitchshifted. With so little time and so many voices still to explore, she starts to layer up the vocal harmonies.
Next is “Riding That Symbol”, which begins with Harding up tight to the microphone, jazz inflections in her breathy intimacy, before she multitracks her pristine tones over a mournful synthesizer drone. On the closing “Coats”, she drawls like a young Lucinda Williams on the oddball refrain “big thick coats on the dogs of people just trying to help” before busting out a one-woman harmony trio, exploring distinctive registers right to the end.