Review
Four years after Warm Chris, Aldous Harding introduces her fifth album with a lone piano arpeggio and the wry admission that she has "been away too long". Train on the Island plunges back into the New Zealand songwriter's distinct minimalism, maintaining her penchant for theatrical vocal shifts and sparse, unpredictable arrangements,. Yet instead of holding the listener at arm's length, the record fosters a striking intimacy, arriving as what Paste calls "a minimalist, open-hearted jaunt through the twisty-turny annals of Harding's incomprehensible brain".
Working again with producer John Parish, Harding favors unhurried pacing over grand climaxes. Skeletal arrays of pedal steel, murmuring synthesizers, and harp drift in and out beside her acoustic guitar,. Critics admire how this economy of sound magnifies her emotional impact; musicOMH praises the effort as "exquisite in its underplayed lightness," noting how the spacious production foregrounds a "beguiling fragility". Without sacrificing her surreal, unknowable edge, Harding uses quiet observation to root her eccentricities in a profound, deeply human resonance,.
