Aldous Harding has the kind of voice that could haunt a sheep paddock. And when she stands up — as she likes to say — people apparently don’t want her to sit back down. There’s a disarming honesty to Harding’s whole approach — she’ll give you the poet’s trick but won’t pretend she’s a wizard. Her new record, Designer, is exactly that: a minimalist illusion dressed up as something bigger than the sum of its meticulously stitched parts.
She spent years touring until her soul was as threadbare as the hem of an old stage curtain. “I became very hungry very quickly,” she says. Hungry enough to forget about rest, to ignore her own body screaming no more, until it was all giving, giving, giving. “I felt a bit like I was on a quiz show — ‘Okay, and this round is called: Be the singer!’” If the secret to longevity is pacing yourself, Aldous Harding’s secret is something closer to collapsing gracefully.
Of course, there’s the question about the words she uses — Dubai, Amazon, the lyrical postcards from places she’s never properly been. “There’s a bit about Dubai and people ask me about it,” she says, “and I think the fact that I’m being asked about that line means it worked.” She’s never been outside the airport in Dubai. But who cares? It rhymed with ‘why’ and that’s more than good enough for a woman who deals in vaporous imagery like some people sell bath bombs.
Don’t try to pin her down on the meaning of the word Designer, either. It’s a “full stop” for her — an elegant bow slapped onto the oddity she stitched up before the credits roll. “I wanted it to be an elegant word… like ‘seriously.’ There’s no such thing as the designer, so deal with that in the loving ways I—” She trails off, which is exactly how you’d expect someone who deals in unfinished edges to finish a thought.
The thing is, Harding’s trick isn’t adding layers — it’s refusing to add more than necessary. “I struggled to add things, if anything,” she says. “It’s like having a baby for the first time. You just learn when it’s too hot or hungry or needs sleep.” If you think that’s an odd comparison, congratulations: you’ve never made something that devours you alive.
When I mention how the song “The Barrel” does so much with so little, she doesn’t pretend it’s sorcery. “It’s nice because it is a very selfless, artistically selfless thing I made,” she says, as if she’s still surprised people like it. “Part of me was always dubious that people enjoyed my music.”
But that’s the trick of Aldous Harding: she stands up, she sings weird, sad, beautiful things, and she keeps standing up. It’s our job to notice when she does, and our privilege to watch her keep doing it — for as long as she can bear to keep giving herself away.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "The Barrel" below!
