-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Aldous Harding
ALBUM...: Party
GENRE...: Indie
STYLE...: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Folk Rock, Acoustic
STYLE...: Contemporary Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Psychedelic Folk, Chamber Folk
YEAR....: 2017
LABEL...: 4AD
COUNTRY.: United Kingdom
PLACE...: Cardiff, Cardiff
BORN....: 1990, Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 737 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 9
SIZE....: 202.98 MB
URL..: https://www.facebook.com/AldousHarding
https://aldousharding.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Harding
https://aldousharding.bandcamp.com/album/warm-chris
https://higherplainmusic.com/2017/09/22/aldous-harding-party-review
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/05/19/529105358/the-story-of-aldous-hardings-party-track-by-track
https://www.metacritic.com/music/party/aldous-harding
- TRACKLIST
1 Blend 2:29
2 Imagining My Man 5:50
3 Living The Classics 2:45
4 Party 5:43
5 I'm So Sorry 3:48
6 Horizon 4:09
7 What If Birds Aren't Singing They're 3:04
Screaming
8 The World Is Looking For You 5:08
9 Swell Does The Skull 5:49
Total Playtime: 38:45
There's no feeling greater than hearing a new artist for the first time and
knowing that this is love at first listen, again. Meet Aldous Harding, your
newest sweetheart.
But this is no fairytale romance. Harding's music is as unsettling as it is
breathtakingly beautiful. There is a darkness that makes songs such as What
If The Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming the blackest of comedies. This
New Zealand singer-songwriter's debut for 4AD is towering, glorious,
magnificent, while at the same time fragile, haunting and disturbing.
Harding's delivery is unique, her range from the deepest velvet to the most
discordant cry; her enunciation infusing every syllable with her tortured
soul. She can make the space in her music sound like an orchestra. You think
you must be listening to lush arrangements, but then notice it's just her
single-tracked voice over a little bit of plucked Spanish guitar. And every
song is the best one on the album.
Shimmering guitars underpin the questioning Imagining My Man. The title track
tears at the heart ("I was as happy as I will ever be"), while Horizon is
brutal - "every now and then, I think about when you'll die, babe". Simply
stunning.
*
When Aldous Harding sings "he took me to a clearing" on the title track of
her second album, it sounds more like the start of a murder ballad than an
invitation to a pool party.
Sung in a slightly girlish voice over gentle guitar and piano, it has all the
hallmarks of reverential gothic folk. Yet when the New Zealand
singer-songwriter observes some time later that "stones smell good when you
cuddle them" the track's tone shifts to the kind of stoner folk that's
continued on the Nico-esque 'What If Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming'.
It's an ability to tease expectations that marks out the best of these nine
tracks. The percussion on 'Blend', which reverberates like snooker balls
being knocking together, has a puritanical sparsity that defies the trademark
lushness of her new label 4AD. The cheerleader 'hey!' yelps on the piano-led
'Imagining My Man', meanwhile, sound misplaced until they register as a
perverse antidote to the track's somber tone.
Her vocals are equally contrary, with multiple characters being created as
she shifts from smoky blues on 'I'm So Sorry' to seething confrontation on
standout torch song 'Horizon', which strips away all instruments save piano
and cello.
These voices are united by the way in which she enunciates words, giving the
impression that she's encountering them for the first time. This creates an
uneasy, slightly alien feel when harmonised against herself, as on the title
track, or when contrasted with Perfume Genius' Mike Hadreas on the
out-of-time 'Swell Does The Skull'.
The different voices and inversions mean that, even though she operates
within the broad confines of gothic folk, she has an air of unpredictability.
This suggests that the listener is party to a talent at the very start of her
creative life.
*
Americana might need a new name, so many sterling exemplars have been rolling
in off the South Pacific: Nadia Reid and Julia Jacklin, for two. The latest
is Aldous Harding, whose second album of hypnotic folk flowers into something
far more opaque and artistically evolved. Producer John Parish's long
association with PJ Harvey is a reference point, but Harding is her own
woman, an arresting vocalist whose mannered deliveries - from chanteuse to
jazzy - and intense themes defy obvious influence. Titles such as What If
Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming and Swell Does the Skull (featuring
Perfume Genius) evince the best kind of gothic bent, but there is much else
to get lost in here: stones that feel, instruments barely caressed.
*
This is the kind of Party I'd like to be invited to. Aldous Harding is one of
this year's most talked about singer-songwriters and not without good reason
on the evidence of this second album. Blessed with one of, if not two of
(more of that later) the most distinctive and powerful voices to emerge in
recent memory, what renders the album vital and beautiful is the way that
those vocals are complimented by instrumentation which calls to mind
Parliament of Owls, Lisa Hannigan's beautiful recent work and the intricacy
of Flo Morrissey's compositional skill. It's the kind of album which will
doubtless appear on many end of year best-of lists but, when it does, it
should not be scoffed at or dismissed. This is a work of depth and passion
the like of which we see and hear all-too rarely.
Aldous Harding is a lady of, it seems two voices. There is the sing-song,
almost twee delivery of 'Bleed' and 'Party' as set against 'Imagining My Man'
and ;I Am So Sorry', with their sonorous and deep incantation of lyrics of
inner turmoil and sincerity. What is startling is that never once as these
voices appear to swap at will does the album lose its potency. 'Bleed' begins
with the yearning of "Hey man, I really need you back again" and by the time
of its harrowing close, the thrice repeated "You're the perfect man" sets the
course that the album will take. This is serious music of love, loss and all
things in between.
On 'Party', we're told that "He took me to a clearing, the grass was warm and
the air was soft", whilst the chorus informs us that "I was as happy as I
will ever be, believe me, I will never break from you" before the question,
tantalising and almost frightening comes: "If there's a party will you wait
for me?"
Over the top of some lovingly-picked acoustic guitar, 'I'm So Sorry' begins
with another gorgeous lyric (there are a lot of them, hence all the quotes)
as the confession rings out "Freedom, balance, so many friends wish that for
me". One gets the feeling that this is sung with an arched eyebrow. The poise
and control exhibited throughout by Harding, wondrously assisted by the
production of John Parish is one of an artist who knows exactly who she is,
what she wants and how to get it.
Running to nine songs, the album features no missteps. Whilst there's nothing
here that seems likely to trouble daytime radio, there's plenty that's likely
to accompany you suitably through the end of a tumultuous evening or the
emotive climax of an on-screen relationship in TV shows and films in years to
come. There is something both abstract and individual and yet universal about
the way that Harding writes and presents her trials and triumphs of the
heart.
Tucked away in the midst of the sumptuous 'Living the Classics' comes the
album's most telling line of all. "Can't fight the feeling, I'm gonna make
it", Harding sings, and it's hard to disagree.
*
A record that's at ease when stalking through the shadows.
With a title like 'Party,' you might expect New Zealand singer-songwriter
Aldous Harding's new album to be a much sunnier affair than her blackened
debut, which focused on her then more fractured state of mind. Prepare to be
surprised. To an extent. Though Aldous herself has stated that 'Party' isn't
an ironic title, it's still a record that's at ease when stalking through the
shadows.
What's truly captivating is how she can create an impact with seemingly so
few components. Much of 'Party' is built on gentle acoustic guitar melodies,
hushed piano lines and dusty percussion, not too unlike Scott Walker or
'White Chalk' era PJ Harvey (somewhat unsurprising considering that long-time
Harvey collaborator John Parish produced the album). There's also the
occasional snap of a drum machine, and a slight smattering of saxophone too,
just giving a little bit of extra texture to keep things fresh.
But why clutter a record with too many instruments when you've got a voice
like her's, and some equally fascinating narratives to match? Her vocals give
'Party' its emotional punch. And it can sometimes feel like being hit by a
heavyweight champion. It's particularly heart-rending on the likes of the
title track, where she moves from hushed tones to straining with burgeoning
emotion in the space of a heartbeat. She's at her most vocally forceful on
'Horizon', where she candidly intones lines like "every now and then I think
about when you'll die babe". Things get even more existential when she asks
"what if birds aren't singing, they're screaming" on the track of the same
name. It might be about the sometimes morbid things that come to one's head
when high, but Aldous Harding manages to make it sound like a truly profound,
philosophical question.
Despite this, there are a few moments of levity scattered throughout 'Party'.
Even though it has lines like "won't stop turning until I'm twisted", 'Living
the Classics' is a beautifully strummed, short but sweet folky number, while
the shouts of "hey" and "yes" throughout the chorus of 'Imagining My Man'
lends the track an element of youthful exuberance. For the most part though,
this is a party for one, best enjoyed curled up with few distractions in the
twilight hours. Sit, contemplate, and be absorbed into Aldous Harding's
spellbinding realm.
*
Peering out beneath the peak of a blue baseball cap, Christchurch, New
Zealand's Aldous Harding cut a fairly unassuming figure on the sleeve of her
2014 debut. Often tagged - and by the artist herself - as 'gothic folk', the
music inside was brittle, spartan and, in places, beautiful.
There was darkness, and hints of the fantastic - particularly on the brace of
songs named for Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy - but Harding's voice was
an eerie, feather-light thing, with raw, quavering hints of Kate Bush,
Melanie Safka or Jessica Pratt's unearthly warble.
Now signed to 4AD - an ideal home for such a spectral and distinctive sound -
Party is unmistakeably darker in hue. That cover shot of Harding for
instance: a sepulchral glow behind a dusty veil, her eyes little more than
smears.
Beginning typically, with a rolling classical guitar and a melancholy,
whispered plea of a vocal, full of oblique asides ("I really need you back
again...somewhere, I have a watercolour you did"), the opening Blend quickly
ups the tension with the tick-tick-punch of a drum machine and faint, alien
shimmers of electronics. It's these extra elements, these extra colours in
the palette, which set Party apart from Harding's debut, along with a marked
difference to her singing style, all evident from the remarkable second
track, Imaging My Man.
An octave down, Harding's voice takes on a rich, smooth, but icily deadpan
quality. The absolute clarity with which she picks through the verse,
over-punctuating ("It can be, so hard, to forgive/It's not what I thought.
And it's not what I pictured.") over calm, circling piano chords in the
verse, contrasts with the almost jarringly joyous chorus - complete with
backing yelps of "Hey!" and "Yes!" - her lines, almost imperceptibly, doubled
by Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius). And when you think you know where she's
taking you, she'll jump back up in range, taking her time over single,
piercing lines ("If you get dooo-ooown"), which burst the tranquil bubble (a
trick repeated on the high, heady interjection in I'm So Sorry).
The gorgeous dual saxophone lines at the end are provided by
multi-instrumentalist Enrico Gabrielli, a member of PJ Harvey's band.
Harvey's longtime collaborator John Parish produced Party with Harding,
bringing her over to Bristol for the sessions, and the partnership has added
layers of detail and colour to the songs which often belie the stark,
unsettling imagery within.
Both Harding and her lyrics resist easy explanation, and humorous fragments -
a passage in Living the Classics about wanting to "take Mom to Paris" and
"jump on the big beds", or the rambling, pondering What If Birds Aren't
Singing, They're Screaming - jostle for focus with disquieting, solitary
lines. Party's opening "He took me to a clearing/the grass was warm/and the
air was soft" could be to a love song or a murder ballad, while Horizon
starts with a biblical gravity - "Let me put the water in the bowl for your
wounds, babe". And the closing Swell Does The Skull, although abstract and
inscrutable, is the nearest she gets to a straightforward confessional
("Don't want to be a sinner/but Bourbon... always Bourbon"), while also being
the closest in style to her debut.
Shifting moods and voices effortlessly, Harding is an often technically
astonishing performer, and Party is a work of quiet power. An inviting,
captivating darkness.
*
About:
Singer/songwriter Aldous Harding first drew praise for the gothic folk and
stark emotionality of her 2015 debut that brought about comparisons to both
Kate Bush and Scott Walker. She grew up as Hannah Harding in the town of
Lyttelton near Christchurch in New Zealand to musician parents. Her mother
was folk singer Lorina Harding, and it was on her NZ Folk album of the year
award-winning record Clean Break that the 13-year-old Harding made her
recording debut.
Despite this early foray into the music business, the young Harding had no
interest in pursuing a career as a musician, believing it to be a precarious
existence. Just a couple of years later, she began to let go of her dreams of
becoming a vet when she started singing and writing songs alongside friend
and fellow musician Nadia Reid. By 2008 she was performing backup vocals for
the travelling string band the Eastern, and Harding got an early break when
she was spotted busking by Anika Moa, who on the back of that performance
invited the young musician to open for her at her show that same night.
In 2012 Harding changed her forename to Aldous and asked Marlon Williams and
Ben Edwards to co-produce what would become her debut record. The self-titled
release garnered much critical acclaim, and Harding toured the album
extensively. For her follow-up, she signed to British independent label 4AD,
and enlisted the help of John Parish (Sparklehorse, PJ Harvey) to co-produce
the record. Her sophomore album Party was released in 2017, and was preceded
by the singles "Horizon" and "Imagining My Man."
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Dream Pop
is a subgenre of
alternative rock and neo-psychedelia
that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop
melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions,
and effects such as reverb, echo, tremolo, and chorus. It often
overlaps with the related genre of shoegaze, and the
two genre terms have at times been
used interchangeably.
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