Concert Review: Aldous Harding Turns Rough Trade Into A Singing Library
With her eyes widening and her face and body contorting, Aldous Harding took me aback. She played her soft songs on life’s wonder and whims like they her madness. Sitting on her chair, with her guitar in hand, I looked as she seemed transfixed by her sound; noticing that she was calmer when not looking to the audience and playing her piano. These physical and emotional moves, oddly, represented the heart of her music.
Being social is anxiety-inducing. At times, even at the height of a great night, where you were both loved and loving, doubts crawl into your mind to threaten your peace. It is like looking at a gorgeous landscape and becoming obsessed with the fact that you have to leave in 15 minutes. For some reason, we let anxiety nip at our imagination, of which, for Aldous Harding, it lives in the quietness of the present. Thus, it is something that you have to fight for, even it means challenging yourself.
As one patron put it, “Wow, it is as quiet as a library in here.” The statement might have been made in jest, but it was relevant to how stilling and even literary Aldous Harding is in style. She feels like a good book you are about to finish reading; having you completely obsessed with seeing whether the heroine find her empowerment. Hence, tracks like, “Designer,” “The Barrel,” “Old Peel,” and “Damn” were filled with metaphors and imagery. Lyrically, Aldous Harding treats her verses like they leapt from the pages of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar; balancing notes of sadness, desire, fear, and nobility. Thus, throughout the night, had Aldous standing and tossing her hands like Norma Jean or sitting and spinning melodies like they were golden threads. She felt like Andy Kaufman and Joni Mitchell had had a gifted, singing child; pushing audiences with her eccentric style to observe their own strangeness.
Aldous Harding attracts a crowd that is willing to get as silent as a library in their attempt to think about how weird this world is for calling them strange. The craziness of society is that it fears receiving the same harsh judgment it notoriously gives, and the higher you go in society, the more that fear grows. Thus, Aldous uses her soft, lulling voice to transform her notes into fingertips plucking away at the most scared. For More Information On Aldous Harding Click Here.
