It would be quite wrong to call Aldous Harding one of the most interesting singers in the world. Rather, the New Zealander is at least five of the most interesting singers in the world. On her new, fourth album WARM CHRIS, she plays the title track as the bushy-haired folk woman who lets a surf guitar riff surge up in the dark night – or the forest witch, who came to earth from a similar intermediate world as the Welshwoman Cate Le Bon, to be there in a frothy 70s -indulging in soft rock.
On the song “Tick Tock,” which could have appeared on Harding’s last, equally excellent third album DESIGNER, she’s a disturbingly sugary girl who someone accidentally let into the children’s program. And in the end, isn’t she suddenly Lou Reed, who wants to sound like Nico, but then briefly turns into Kate Bush? Harding plays folk in all roles, building on more classical instruments – her stubborn e-piano, gladly also jazz horns – but always changing direction and temperature.
The amazing thing: Although Harding’s signature sound has gradually brightened since the breakthrough album, the gothic-folk masterpiece PARTY from 2017, there is still something latently demonic and comforting in the sound and the cryptic lyrics. In a way, the songs on WARM CHRIS are a case for the psychoanalyst: something inexplicably uncanny lurks behind even the most delicate little curtain. And not a zombie or ghost. More like a bear who speaks in his own father’s voice. You understand. Or don’t you understand? That’s good, too, because it is precisely the ambiguity, the intangible and diffuse that makes Harding’s delicate music so powerful and fascinating.
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