Photo by Kate Ellen Meakin

Separate the art from the artist, you’ll be hard-pressed to when you’re giving listen to Aldous Harding, though she does have a grip on doing just that when it comes to her own encounters with the art rock gods. “I met the real John Cale / He had no words, but I don’t mind,” she sings at one point on “One Stop”, the leadoff single from the New Zealand songwriter’s forthcoming fifth studio album, Train on the Island. “I packed the stage while he ate rice,” she goes on to pay off the punchline with autobiography. Never meet your idols they say, unless you’re willing to one-up them at their own game as Harding does here.

Toiled up in the John Parish’s sense for the avant-garde in spare space production, the listen allows Harding the opportunity to captivate the room with her own writ over a somewhat formless song structure built around a turvy piano line and steady percussion. Yet, it’s her vocal act that succeeds in playing the part of a trad folk star version of herself, or maybe that’s just herself. “I’m gonna write what I know / Things I ain’t known for a long time.” Compared to the atypical variants of affliction heard throughout 2022’s Warm Chris, she’s certainly provocatively blurring the lines between the person and the performer, and we’re out here discovering each new face to who that is as time goes by.

Directed by: Michelle Henning

Aldous Harding’s Train on the Island will be released May 8th on 4AD.