One of Aotearoa's most distinctive voices, Aldous Harding has released her fourth album Warm Chris this week.
She talked to Music 101's Charlotte Ryan about creation, collaboration, and why she still doesn't see herself as a musician.
Aldous Harding in the video for 'Fever.' Photo: Aldous Harding
Much of Warm Chris was written during 2020's lockdown, which Lyttleton native Harding spent with her mother in Geraldine before heading off to her other home in Wales to record with producer John Parish, who worked on her last two albums and is best known for his work with PJ Harvey.
She spoke to Music 101 from Geraldine, where she's been before heading out to tour the world and promote Warm Chris.
"I'm just trying to spend as much time with my mum as possible before going," she said. "Trying to build the tank up, I guess."
A private person, Harding is not known for her fondness for interviews.
"I get that a lot that people feel nervous interviewing me, and unfortunately there is a self-preservation element, where it's you or me and unfortunately, I have to look out for me because this is sort of the only shot."
"I'm not interested in myself beyond what I deliver. This over-achieving thing that I have is really hard to turn off.
"It's not that I'm cold, I'm just focused. I don't want to give an answer I'll regret giving."
Harding's lyrics are often enigmatic, leaving her fans trying to parse their meaning.
"Trying to trying to anchor yourself in Harding's lyrics can feel like organizing a narrative from the shape of passing clouds," influential music site Pitchfork wrote in its positive review for Warm Chris.
But to Harding, a lot of joy lies in the listener finding their own interpretation of her work.
"I understand why people want to know. They feel like they need to know like it'll bring them closer to me or to themselves.
"But the truth is, I've always enjoyed listening to a record that I've heard hundreds of times and suddenly, because I've grown up, or I've discovered something new, I discover something new in the song. I want to give people that opportunity to grow with the soundtrack.
"I don't think it's necessary to know exactly what I'm thinking and actually I think it's detrimental."
While Harding's songs have won praise around the world, if you ask her, she's not even sure a musician is what she is.
"A musician is something that I resonate with less and less," she said.
"I realised that part of my stress with live performance is that I really don't think that I am a musician. I really do feel more like an actor."
"Without being too spooky, a lot of the time I feel that it's not really up to me, if that's not too wild to mention."
Her relationship to her own work has changed since her first, self-titled album in 2014.
"With my first album, I was quite a different person then and I just had no idea how to soothe myself in any other way. I didn't know anything about myself. And so those songs really were, at the time, it did feel like a necessity."
Harding worked again with producer Parish on Warm Chris, who also produced Harding's Party and Designer. It was a collaboration with a familiar partner, but that doesn't mean it was always comfortable when wrapped up in the process of creation.
"Every album or every song is an opportunity for glory in the most poetic sense of the word," Harding said.
"The stakes are very high. There's a silent communication happening between our gifts. His gift, my gift, and we're... we're just interested in each other."
"I think John knows that I'm as fragile as I am strong. It's quite serious a lot of the time and that's my fault."
Harding drew others into her sphere for Warm Chris, including Parish's daughter Hopey and Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson, who duets with Harding on album closer 'Warm Leathery.'
"It was his physicality and his power that I was attracted to and I think I knew that he would be able to make any sound that I asked him to even though his own style was quite distinct."
"I said look, I just want you to listen to this and I want you to sing along with me, and I want you to just nail it. ... He was a little, I want to say nervous, he was just like, 'This woman's not right ... but I'll do it,' and then he did it in one like one take or two takes.
"I love the effort. It's just so cool and sad, and ... it's moments like that that keep me really superstitious about my art.
"I really do think that it's, in my case, a lot about listening, and not being too worried about hitting a brand or being a certain kind of thing, because if I listen to suggestions like that from whomever, it ends up working really well and if I try to cut that off and build myself a little identity house, I'll just get stuck."
"It's reactions like that that make me go OK, I'm mad, but I'm not stupid, you know?"
