When it comes to music and extra especially favorite artists I like to turn the critic off. The reviewer.
Aldous Harding is one such favorite artist, even a favorite among favorites, so I greet a new record the same way I would a gift—take it in and see what happens. I’ve had the great pleasure of listening to a prerelease copy of Train on the Island for the past month or so and I can tell you it is as wily a record as you’re bound to hear.
Wily in that Aldous Harding—the singer, musician, songwriter, person, and persona—is front and center but always seemingly just out of reach. Just when I think I’m getting close the music moves. It shifts, changing personality and voice putting me perpetually off center, off kilter, as if trying to catch smoke in a hallway filled with countless doors that each let in their own kinda draft. Until the realization arrives that we’re the ones being moved (I’ve had similar experiences with the works of Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp).
Among my very favorite things when listening to music is feeling attracted and lost. Uneasy and Aldous Harding is a master of such moves making Train on the Island, released this very day on 4AD, the richest kind of gift.
From “I Ate the Most”:
You’re smooth like she loved my father
Amen
Sometimes I eat till I vomit
There’s heavy and there’s heavier
I’m nine and I love my mommy
Silver hair and Ritalin
If I’m safe, then love is a spectrum
Sweet like lemon
I can’t move with you on my shoulders
I feel that I feel the most
You are through with me on your shoulders
But I can prove that I ate the most ’cause I did
I’d like to fly
I’d like to fly
I’d like to fly