Aldous Harding landed on the pop planet in 2016, dressed as a rather special folk singer. We knew she was brilliant, but she was still drowning a little in the mass. Since then, she has only surprised, with a wardrobe that is gaining in variety and originality.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Released in 2019, his third album, Designate, had revealed an eclectic singer-songwriter, able to switch from one costume to another without apparent effort. With this new offering, the New Zealander confirms her status as a disguise magician.
Each song seems to her an opportunity to embody a new character, through a diverse vocal palette. Here serious, further childish, angelic, sweet, haunting, weird… The timbres and the tones follow one another and are not alike, despite the great homogeneity of the whole.
A few influences (PJ Harvey, Neil Young, Vashti Bunyan, Velvet Underground) emerge in this neo-folk-pop-indie exercise, which is also distinguished by the eclecticism of its arrangements, signed John Parish (especially known for his work with PJ Harvey). Acoustic guitar and piano dominate in a very minimalist soundscape, punctuated by drums, banjo, organ, fuzz guitar, string quartet. There is space. It’s sweet, it’s beautiful, it’s strange. Strangely beautiful.
Both unpredictable and restrained, Warm Chris can be confusing at first listen. But it gets us pretty quickly under the seams. And if Aldous Harding can make you think of other singers of her generation like Cate Le Bon, Dana Gavanski, Mesadorm, Lynette Williams, she certainly has her own little something. We let it infuse. We breathe. We close our eyes. We put that back.
Warm Chris
Aldous Harding
4AD