Lyttelton, NZ · folk · art-pop

Aldous Harding

1 upcoming festival

New Zealand's shapeshifting folk enigma — every song a different possession, delivered with unnerving stillness, strange voices, and total command of a silent room.

Aldous Harding is a songwriter from New Zealand, raised in Lyttelton near Christchurch, who works in a spare folk idiom shaped as much by performance as by arrangement. Her records, including Party and Designer, were made with producer John Parish and pair simple instrumentation with unusual vocal choices — she shifts register and character from song to song, sometimes within a verse.

On stage she is known for a fixed, deliberate physical presence and minimal address to the audience, which tends to concentrate attention on the songs themselves. Her lyrics are elliptical rather than confessional.

folkart-pop