(4AD)
Lyrics about naked owls and eating rocks might be irksome to some – but there’s no denying that the alt-rocker’s fifth album is beguiling, tightly written and richly melodic
Aldous Harding cuts a divisive figure in the world of alt-rock. To her devotees – and there are enough of them to warrant her playing three nights at London’s Barbican later this month – she is a strange and endlessly fascinating figure. Her lyrics are mysteries to be unpicked for deeper meaning, like dreams awaiting analysis. On Train on the Island, her fifth album, you’re invited to make some kind of sense of stuff about naked owls, having your face covered with bechamel sauce, seeing “the real John Cale” silently eating rice, “Sicilians reaching over the clams”, and the imponderable lines: “I’m saving myself by eating rocks and plants / I pray for the incel.”
The curious album covers; the uneasy stage presence and between-song non-sequiturs; the weird costumes; the videos filled with her pulling faces and engaging in awkward choreography; the preponderance of mannered vocal tics and funny accents when she sings, noticeable on Train on the Island’s Worms (vaguely Gallic vowel-stretching) and closer Coats (strangulated girlish voice); the halting, elliptical interviews: for fans, this is evidence of true originality in a cookie-cutter era.
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