Idiosyncratic doesn’t even begin to describe Aldous Harding’s creative journey. That the New Zealand songwriter has traversed herself as a vessel of art-rock, experimental folk picking, and a type of indie rock peered best at with a tilted head has only left we as listeners with a curious wonder to approaching any of her new bodies of work. With her fifth album, Train on the Island, that remains sharper than ever in its contrast, as she again chameleons her sound into something that can simply be defined as very Aldousian.

For this recording, Harding went into the studio with John Parish, whose own refinement on liminal space production makes for an apt canvas for her to mine uncanny stylings to make vivid. The most apparent of them come from within rather than merely by instrument, as Harding assumes the shape of multiple dimensions of herself through varying vocal afflictions. On opener “I Ate the Most” and “Worms”, she drawls you into her own steady conversations. With “Venus In the Zinnia”, she playfully yawls into the jangle and squiggling synthsation alongside collaborator H. Hawkline, and explores a dichotomy of whimsy and deadpan in the casual fit strum of “Coats”. It’s on the album standout “One Stop” where she is her most objectively realized version of herself, however, made all the more striking in it being an exercise in writing what she knows.

Though not many colors of paint are applied to the canvas instrumentally — guitar lines are abrupt and tightened whether in fingerpicked or chorded form, the drumming toes in nimbly, though basslines burgeon a robust, healthy heartbeat throughout — they alongside Harding’s obtusely impressionistic lyricism complimented by the album’s cover of a smudged, matte blue-faced painting over a real portrait offer just the right amount of surrealism for yet another listening escape by an artist who resembles no other.

Highlights: “One Stop”, “Worms”, “Venus in the Zinnia”

Aldous Harding’s Train on the Island is available now on 4AD.

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