Aldous Harding 2019

Think Party was a bit more prickly around the edges and less accessible whilst Designer is much gentler and less jarring imo.

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hope Zoo Eyes hits big in the UAE

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Yep, that is a good summation of the two!

Seem to be in a minority of people that find her completely insufferably inauthentic and obviously like the worst person you’d meet on a contemporary performing arts degree.

Everything from the way she sings in such markedly different voices, to the butoh appropriations and the Robert De Niro exorcisms just seems sooo contrived to me.

A few really quite good songs, but I can’t get past the performancy stuff that makes my skin crawl.

Horses courses tho eh.

Finally watched the video for The Barrel and my word is it something. I love her so much.

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The blue mask on the top of her head is so genius

dunno about that, but i do enjoy her first album the most for the relative lack of pretension compared to the sort of persona she’s built up since.

quite enjoying the new album too though, sticking with me a lot more than Party did

I’ve been playing her first album a lot recently and wondering why I didn’t recognise it as the absolute masterpiece that it clearly is at the time. It’s an absolutely extraordinary record.

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I’d written her off as not my cup of tea but I was so wrong. Party, and Designer are amazing

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Superb live too. She creates quite an otherworldly atmosphere.

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Can understand how if you just stumbled across a youtube video she might come across as quite contrived and the affectations might be annoying.
Personally I just really liked her debut and then think how she leapt forward with Party was brilliant - adore the way she transforms her voice, love her. Also she could probably sell about 10x as many records if she just played it as a straight marketable female singer-songwriter so really don’t think she’s faking the persona.

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I think her career shows how difficult these things are to negotiate, perhaps especially for female artists.

The first album was largely ignored as just ‘another’ acoustic female singer-songwriter record (I was probably partly in that camp at the time). The latter records are dismissed by some as being too quirky.

In fact those three albums are an almost perfect body of work. She’s a major artist, but not treated as one yet,

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Slightly geeky question- does anyone know who the second vocalist is on the last track on the debut album? The record has no credits at all.

Yeah, on Horizon for example she sounds quite a lot like the vocalist from London Grammar (at the start at least)

I spent ages having to skip Horizon as the start reminded me of Adele! I got over it though.

Remember when Designer came out reading quite a few comments about people not liking her, not her music but her personally. On what basis I don’t know.

Agree 100% with what you said. Double standards is still startling sometimes

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Haha I love it. I don’t like Adele, but I love London Grammar

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Elation, the one leftover from the Party sessions, may be my fave. It’s so damn beautiful.

Having a relisten to her first album now for the first time in a while. I’ve seen her life a few times, with the first time being at a free lunchtime Daylight Music gig.

The first album definitely felt more ‘straightforward’ in comparison to the follow up album, but it’s nice to go back to it now and see how it feels.

I recently watched a Kate Bush documentary (not knowing too much about her), and she definitely seemed quite similar in the way that she would do slightly out there / different performances and videos.