FILTER ALBUMS
Cracked Actor
Who will the New Zealand shapeshifter channel this time? Bowie? P.J.? Neil? Tom Doyle marvels at a singer of many voices. Illustration: Vince Pastiche.
Aldous Harding
★★★★
Warm Chris
4AD. CD/DL/LP
“YOU KNOW people that I’ve been,” sings Aldous Harding in a close-up whisper, eight tracks into her fourth album, amid the f loaty, light acoustic ’60s pop arrangement of Staring At The Henry Moore. It’s likely a statement for a friend or intimate, but it might just as easily be one directed at us, the listeners to her songs, which typically feature a diverse cast of vocal characters. Slipping into the lineage of Tom Waits, (particularly Berlin trilogyera) David Bowie and P.J. Harvey, Harding assumes the position of singer-as-actor, often sounding like not the same vocalist – or even the same person – within the space of two consecutive performances.
It’s clearly empowering for Aldous Harding to adopt this air of theatricality and these personae, not least the one of Aldous Harding herself. New Zealand-born Hannah Topp has admitted that, since beginning to operate as Harding in 2014, she’s grown increasingly wary of her creation. “I trust myself musically,” she told MOJO 306, “but I’m not sure I trust the woman who’s taken on this thing. I think there’s moments of clear fragility.”