I Hear a Song from Inside Aldous Harding’s Maze
Aldous Harding’s third studio album, Designer, was released in 2019. I stumbled upon Designer in 2020. I discovered it late; I discovered it at the perfect time. Music this enchanting thrills regardless of year, season, locale; however, Aldous Harding’s (born Hannah Sian Topp) music is tailor-made for life under COVID quarantine.
Irresponsible leaders — the governor of my home state of Florida, for instance — have brazenly opened economies and schools, putting at risk the most vulnerable to COVID exposure. Large gatherings at bowling alleys, movie theaters, and bars give proof that many in my state experienced quarantine as if they were vacuum sealed in a jar; the governor’s opening of the state was the pop of the safety button that signaled the kickoff to the party in Florida. The bar scene, or any scene for that matter, is not an option for me. My wife and I live with older family members that fall in the “vulnerable” category. For them, exposure means almost certain death. How have I survived seven months of self-quarantine? Fairly well, with the aid of several things, one of them being Aldous Harding’s music.
The intimacy of Designer is apparent in the first few seconds. On the first track, “Fixture Picture,” the listener is immediately drawn in by a melancholic acoustic guitar and Harding’s reassuring voice in the forefront. Harding’s music has been filed under the category of “folk.” Reviewers of Harding have lumped her in with Joanna Newsom, Big Thief, Angel Olsen, and even PJ Harvey (Why, given their very different sounds? It is because Harding and Harvey share John Parish as their producer?). These are lazy classifications. The first few seconds of “Fixture Picture,” with its combination of soothing vocals and off-kilter acoustic guitar, makes me think of Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Harding is a kindred spirit of Bowie in terms of the curious allusions in her lyrics, her mysterious private-life subtexts, and even her outfits — compare her outfit in “Zoo Eyes” to Bowie’s outfit in “Ashes to Ashes”:
Designer is also reminiscent of Roxy Music’s Avalon, LCD Soundsystem’s (James Murphy) Sound of Silver, and Destroyer’s (Dan Bejar) Kaputt. These are albums that conjure later midlife reflections of days past, of long-gone youthful excesses, of being caught in the hurly-burly of boisterous pubs and clubs. Harding’s Designer, especially under COVID quarantine, taps into that remembrance of things past, of gathering with friends, of joyful abandon in terms of physical distance; but also of the emptiness of small talk, the vacuity of drunken nights, hungover mornings, and of trying to communicate with others as loud annoying music plays.
It is Harding’s intimate vocals that remind us of the all too important now, while at the same time reminding us of the hollow aspects of pre-COVID life; and that in the face of an existential pandemic, we should realize the meaninglessness of all those times we complained about slow service or our beer being flat. Intimate conversations under COVID quarantine — in bed with our significant other; over breakfast, sitting side by side on the kitchen counter — are delivered at a lower volume, in a softer register; it is the register captured by Harding. Harding not only recreates the intimacy of quarantine speech, but also the surreal quality of quarantined conversations.
In “Fixture Picture” she sings: “Honey, your face is folding up, As the memory kisses you goodbye, It’s better to live with melody and have an honest time.” Those of us quarantined have indeed been living with memories of past melodies; our sober reflection has been the most honest time we have had in a while. Designer’s most haunting lines are ruefully intoned in “Zoo Eyes.” Harding sings: “Why, what am I doing in Dubai? In the prime of my life…I drove my inner child to a show, It talked all the way home.” Harding’s voice delivers allusions as if they are sober analyses of regrets; regrets that force us all to ask what am I doing in Dubai, Los Angeles, Auckland, Cardiff, or quarantined anywhere in the world, pacing around in our small insulated plot, as the world burns under an authoritarian American president.
Several tracks in Designer allude to a conflict between personal life and career. COVID has shoved many of us into the crossfire of protecting our vulnerable family members while at the same time trying to make a living wage outside the home. Harding mesmerizes when she sings in “The Barrel”: “When you have a child, so begins the braiding, And in that braid you stay.” Indeed, when we have a vulnerable child, spouse, or family member to protect, we often stay in that braid. It is easy to stay in that braid when it comes to frivolous partying or barhopping — those fly-away hair strands of our youth. When the decision involves possibly exposing ourselves to COVID at work and having a family member die, but also making a livable wage to provide for our family, there are no easy answers. The answers are not empirically discoverable in the stars, trees, or rocks. We are forced to choose in a universe that answers back with silence. It is no coincidence Harding mentions Camus in “Pilot”: “I try to be light, stop the low talk, But I am a coward, and Camus was right.” This low talk is the serious talk we have with our quarantined loved ones. In the end, we are forced to choose and design a life for ourselves and our family.
Right now, many crave certainty in uncertain times. I love uncertainty and mystery in art. Those who prefer lyric meanings that are empirically discoverable, gotten-to-the-bottom-of, explained with surgical precision, will have a frustrating time with Harding’s lyrics. In the title track “Designer” we hear: “Ears water the flowers of need, And you bend my day at the knee, Sit down, we’ll frame the far side, Shapes live forever, designer.” In “Pilot” she offers: “You slide like a bangle down the day’s arm, Waiting the hand to be given away, But I don’t deserve it, I won’t wear it, I know it’s a gift but Christmas is gone.”
Those wanting clear answers at all costs may be too entangled in a culture that fetishes STEM; or were likely taught by Language Arts teachers that surgically excised and dissected plot, theme, setting, and main idea in order to arrive at “mastery.” Harding will not allow herself to be mapped and dissected in such fashion. This comes through in most of her interviews for Designer. It seems de riguer for every interviewer to press Harding on the obscurity of her lyrics. She has gently swatted those questions in different ways. She told Vice: “Some people are good with sitting with a metaphor and coming up with their own meaning for it, but most people need to know what it means, and can’t relax until they do.” And then, as if adding to her observation, she told The Line of Best Fit: “Just because it’s available in the store doesn’t mean I have to bring it to your door with a smile and a story….For some people, knowing all this stuff makes it more interesting. But I know what people are like. We take and we take and we take and then we blame the thing for its availability that we demanded. This is a game of longevity. Be patient.” In short, Harding is urging us to inhabit her musical language and allow ourselves to feel vulnerable with the possibility of not getting to the bottom of the “meaning.”
Everything so far said about Designer makes it sound like a very serious affair. Well, yes and no. Harding is very serious about the music she creates, about how much control she has over her music videos, about her lyrics; but her lyrics do contain humor. In the album title track “Designer,” she playfully sings: “That visionary shimmer, Do not lose your young eyes, Laughing at good work with your ugly son, Give up your beauty.” As Harding told Exclaim!: “You can be serious without being serious. You can be seriously joyful, or seriously unapologetic in your joyfulness.” If you need any proof of Harding being seriously joyful, watch the closing sequence of the video for “The Barrel” in which she dances in her underwear playing maracas.
Life is serious and deformed right now. Aldous Harding’s music has provided me with a kind of aesthetic coping. And perhaps, that is it, perhaps all we can do is cope in the midst of all this deformity; the best we can do is make some kind of mark, design some way forward. I give my immense thanks to Aldous Harding for reminding me of that.
