Released: 01/12/23
The first vinyl reissue in years of Aldous Harding’s self-titled 2014 debut is a reminder of just how incredibly good the New Zealand singer-songwriter has always been. Although reminiscent of 60s-era alt-folk legends Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs, and peers such as Josephine Foster, not least in her ethereal voice, which has the same haunting, theramin-like quality as Foster, with a touch of Cate Le Bon’s peculiar (in a good way) consonant-stressing, Harding’s lyrical approach is markedly different. And so in contrast to the make-the-domestic-strange approach of Bunyan and Le Bon, and the occult abstrusity of Perhacs, Harding, like kindred spirit Scout Niblett, opts for unflinching explorations of the raw materials of life: birth, death, love and grief – although on the beguiling ‘Merriweather’, she proves she can write warm and celebratory folk-waltzes as good as anything by Emmylou Harris, which is extremely high praise indeed.