HER DIZZY HEIGHTS

With her fourth album, UK-based New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding confirms her place as a singular artist and an international star in music's left field.

- GRAHAM REID

0ne of the most defining if divisive moments in Aldous Harding's international career came when she appeared on Jools Holland's British music television show Later in 2017.

With only spare piano accompaniment and a few bodily gestures, Harding delivered her extraordinary Horizon with gurning facial expressions and wild eyes.

No sooner did the clip hit the internet than Facebook the megaphone for the older demographic, many of whom had shown no interest in her previously - lit up with keyboard derision.

Yet it's a compelling performance, hard to look away from, and in its own way as ground-breaking and memorable as Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights or David Bowie's Heroes.

Harding understood the power of physical stillness in the visual medium and brought that same quality to bear for her clip of The Barrel in 2019, which let the innate power of the song be central. Until it went wonky two-thirds the way through.

The Barrel won that year's Apra Silver Scroll (songwriting) award, a testament to her ability to craft distinctive and melodically engaging material, which went beyond the constraints of standard pop.

Already her new album, Warm Chris, once again with British producer John Parish and recorded in the famous Rockfield Studios in Wales, has been hailed as album of the month by Britain's Mojo (“a dazzling performance”) and Uncut (“defiantly peculiar ...venture into her total immersion world and one must accept there is no map").

Her two most recent clips for Lawn and Fever off Warm Chris again offer slightly disconcerting visual places of quiet and concentration in a rowdy pop world.