ALDOUS HARDING
Train On The Island (4AD)
Eternal respect to someone who once called an album Warm Chris, but Aldous Harding’s fifth long-player is a frustratingly mixed bag and no mistake. The gnomic lyrics and vocal shapeshifting are unalterable, and are underpinned this time with crisply minimal swatches of piano, guitar and other quietnesses.
This works very well on opening track I Ate The Most, where oblique childhood snapshots are dropped unsettlingly over chill Fender Rhodes and other skitters, or the title track, which locks onto a soft piano motif, has little guitar scratches for texture, and stop-starts nicely. There’s also a plum duet right in the middle called Venus In The Zinnia – featuring Huw Evans aka H. Hawkline – and a whole lot of lilting loveliness.
But these highs are diluted by the album’s second half – short stories that don’t seem to go anywhere, tasteful beds that need messing up. Still: all hail artists that can toss out greatness and clangers with equal ease.
words WILL STEEN
