It’s been four years since we last saw Aldous Harding at The Sinclair, and this time around she sold out the Cambridge venue. Her Train on the Island tour marks continued growth in popularity since she began touring this part of the world in 2017. I saw her on that tour in New York, and then at Berklee’s the Red Room in 2019, a venue she rightly described on stage as “peculiar.” I don’t think she’ll have to play the peculiars ever again.
Waiting for the first act to begin, I listened to the curated playlist on the PA, which featured late 60s/70s soft rock groovers grom the Flying Burrito Brothers, Steely Dan and The Kinks. Aldous Harding is noticeably fond of this era, and has performed “Single Pigeon” by Paul McCartney, and “Right Down the Line” by Gerry Rafferty in past concerts. Tonight’s set featured no such homage.
The first act was an acoustic guitar duo led by Sam Burton from Salt Lake City, who was accompanied by Matt Popieluch of Big Search from LA. They experienced turbulence upon entry as Burton’s mic wouldn’t turn on, requiring a cable swap. After some discussion with the technician to get the reverb back onto the vocals, the fog machine was fired up, and the show began.
The two men were seated next to each other and backlit modestly. They appeared as multicolored silhouettes on a misty evening, a campfire concert in Laurel Canyon. They strummed and sang duets with original folk tunes, reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel but without the high harmony from Garfunkel, so they sounded more like Simon and Simon. Popieluch’s 12-string guitar and both singer’s cavernous vocals lent a grandiosity to the instruments and harmonies, enlarging their presence. Sam Burton confided to the audience that he wanted to welcome the shy-seeming Aldous Harding band to the United States, and he would show his hospitality by teaching them American idioms. “My favorite is, ‘You do the math!’” he said, “Because you can say it after anything!”
They actually do have that saying in New Zealand, but they say “maths” instead of math.
After a brief intermission, the Aldous Harding band, five members in total, crept onto the stage under cover of near-darkness. The lights returned in purple, blue, and green hues, at times, an Aurora Borealis of gem tones illuminated the stage. Aldous, in her trademark letterman jacket, sat in a chair front-and-center. The layout was unorthodox: she was flanked by a drummer to her immediate right (in profile to the audience), a keyboardist to her left, with a bassist and guitarist behind her. All of the musicians were versatile, and the avant-pop arrangements for the Train on the Island tour demanded quick instrument changes mid-song in order to translate this year’s album for the stage.
Much to my delight, the live versions of the songs off of Train on the Island rocked harder than the album. For one, the vocals sat deeper in the mix than the recording, allowing the accompaniment to better complement the vocal. As a post-punk musician myself, I don’t usually listen to bands because of their singing ability, but I’ve been on the Aldous train since 2016. Much ink has been spilled about Harding’s idiosyncratic, original singing style, and it was as captivating this night as usual.
Harding is a fan of the impressionistic bumper sticker approach to lyric writing, and her phrases somehow get stuck in my head for days. The one-liners of “You’re too late, you’re right on time” and “If lady does it, who will be left outside?” contain an ambiguity that leaves room for interpretation, creating space for the listener to become part of the art. Looking around the room, it was clear that people around me saw themselves in her words.
This show struck differently because of the change in stage presence. Aldous Harding is a shy person who finds comfort in being authentic onstage, and that genuineness drew me in. The Sinclair transformed into a listening room, but instead of long periods of oppressive dead air between songs, which unintentionally or intentionally created a palpable tension in the crowd that would only be broken by the beginning of the next song, she generously filled the silence by thanking the audience and apologizing for delays. Instead of saying “NO” when people requested a song she didn’t want to play, or strutting in her persona of the past, she sat hunched with shoulders inward, humble. She went out of her way to show gratitude during and after the show.
Her singing voice was as confident as ever. Vocals were steadfast and strong throughout the night, shapeshifting, right on time, and pitch-perfect. It was clear that she expected the same standard of excellence from her band, and the band held up their end of the bargain. On the tour title track, the bass guitar bubbled underneath us while the electric guitar soared above and the synthesizer bent around. The second song had the drummer switch to electronic pads for “I Ate the Most,” while three-part harmonies ensued. “One Stop” brought up the energy with gem-toned lights swaying around the room. The live version of “One Stop” obviously couldn’t finish with a fadeout like the recording, so this time the chorus satisfyingly comes back around another time after the danceable bridge. “Treasure” was a slight misstep if only because the sparser acoustic guitar and piano rendition was sidelined by odd snapping sounds in the monitors. The drummer was in the pocket the whole night even during departures from the written beat, as could be heard in “Venus in the Zinnia.” The high-hat accented outro was brilliant, but the unexciting lighting on this song didn’t do the change in mood justice.
During “If Lady Does It,” Eileeen, a wonderful woman next to me in her 50s/60s, unfortunately got ejected by security from the concert. So I missed what otherwise might have been a highlight of my night and I assure you dear reader my coverage would have been riveting.
Aldous Harding rose from her chair for the first time to perform “Passion Babe” off of Warm Chris to her most glowing reception yet. “I can be fun!” she joked, before sitting back down. The following tune was “Leathery Whip,” which had an electric guitar power chord entrance so surprisingly loud that the audience whooped. The jammy outro was equally impressive, prompting Harding to remark that, “We were all in that one together, weren’t we?”
Slide guitar and the Fender Rhodes shined on “San Francisco.” On “What Am I Gonna Do?” she included the harp heard on the album, embracing Joanna Newsom comparisons. What did she do? She decided to literally lie down in the supine position while the band played on without her.
For “Warm Chris,” the band left the spotlight as Harding laughed that the boys need to go in their “isolation tanks” while she played a love song. The intimate performance with her acoustic guitar was a vulnerable moment that rang true. She closed out the set with “Coats,” prefacing the rendition with, “This song is about me.” The encore had “Imagining My Man” with Aldous Harding playfully doing her own background vocals. The underrated “Designer” finished out the encore.
Back outside the venue in Cambridge, a motorcycle club was doing wheelies and burnouts on the road. Aldous Harding took some photos with fans, then quickly got the hell out of there, as the Train on the Island tour chugged towards Canada.
