Designer

Highly eccentric and blisteringly beautiful--a record destined to worm its way deep under the skin. [Jun 2019, p.117]

Designer is a record entirely in the image of its creator--Harding remains as lyrically oblique as ever, and the idiosyncrasies in her voice remain her calling card--and yet one that strongly recalls Julia Holter’s Have You in My Wilderness or Angel Olsen’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness in how calmly it oozes confidence.

Designer is both self-referential and evolutionary. ... There's more to chew on here than you'll find in many records released this year. It's with one eye staring into the past and the other firmly fixed on the future that Aldous Harding presents this mysterious, complex and intelligent work--a third essential in as many albums.

A singular talent, Harding seems to have hit her stride on album number three, and while the darkness of previous efforts is still pervasive, Designer feels like a summer record, though it's probably best suited for dusk.

Harding continues to keep listeners on their toes with Designer which, overall, is a unique, luminous record that's about whatever you need it to be about.

Designer is a striking return, pursuing solitary aesthetic goals in a fashion both unrelenting and admirable. It perhaps lacks a little of the indefinable magic that made 2017’s ‘Party’ such a gripping experience, but in its ability to conjure bold, riveting songwriting it underlines Aldous Harding’s position as a truly remarkable artist.

Each of the tracks released from Designer so far has been engrossing – The Barrel, with its opaque lyricism (“show the ferret to the egg”), the equally gnomic Fixture Pixture, with its Air bassline.

Despite what the album’s plain, monochromatic cover art might suggest, this is a warm, textured collection of songs that breathes life at every corner. A real triumph.

It is definitely the voice that is center-stage here, whether she is adopting an aviary croon or a mead-rich sing-speak that gives her a commanding confidence an air of detachment. The magic of her work is how she becomes more human by recognizing the alien lurking in our loves and lives

The best moments on this record arrive when Harding’s playful approach to words syncs up with her playful approach to sound. The logic driving the end result may remain hidden, but its allure is undeniable.

Elegant and elemental, quietly confident and masterfully understated, Designer feels like a breath of fresh air in a time dense with noise and algorithmic hiss.

Her quizzically beautiful third LP, where she pivots artfully from folk eccentric to pop eccentric.

For anyone braced for a further explosion of oddness, the strangest thing about Designer might be how disarmingly pretty it is. The staginess of Harding’s vocals has been slightly toned down, although she is still wont to sing with a curious enunciation, as if she’s invented her own accent. The tunes are sweetly charming.

A record you don't want to turn your back on in any way. [May 2019, p.93]

Harding lays bare the pain and discomfort felt in her previous work, though the road to it is far more dynamic and winding. [May 2019, p.33]