Crossing a puddle in the rain can be perilous: the calculation of jumping force; the angle of attack; how to stick the landing. While often there is a roundabout path to avoid the literal depths of uncertainty, inevitably, we land in a squishy mess—one we thought was just past the soles of our sneakers but encompasses our entire ankle (yuck!). But in the same way, chasm-presenting puddles are often only as deep as our imagination builds them to be. Inside the world of Warm Chris, Aldous Harding offers an eerily analogous taut 10-track package of baroque, fanciful indie-pop jaunts with a disarming depth and lucid melodic transfixion. Each track simmers with an air of lightness and approachability. Once inside, the record's surprising profundity is realized with explorations from the literal to the sweeping imagination.
Warm Chris employs bouncy piano riffs, warm fuzzy baselines, cozy horn honks, and vocal performances stretching from barbed lyrical delivery to slippery mumbling murmurs. Written in bits by Harding in her native New Zealand and elsewhere, and recorded at Rockfield Studios (the storied Welsh countryside recording complex which has hosted Oasis, Robert Plant, Coldplay, Queen, and more), Warm Chris has a sense of insulation and surrounding celestial timelessness. Harding reunites with producer John Parish (best known for his work with PJ Harvey), continuing a creative partnership that began with Aldous' strikingly intimate 2017 project, Party. The sonic palettes the duo captures most notably flow from this partnership to frame the stage for Harding's various narrative perspectives. The album opener's soft marching shuffle and burbling layered hums pull the listener through the veil of Harding's creative world; a varied, intimate, and curious setting. On "Tick Tock," an encounter between two substance-users with aimless conversational musing, a slide-guitar-laced and sing-songy chorus bounces from person-to-person in casual exchanges. The strutting album highlight "Fever," features a juicy piano lick and vibrant vocal passages cascading into a lush horn arrangement underpinning a story of two criss-crossing romantic souls trading accounts of one night under the light of the moon. The track presents a crystallized example of how the album, rather than ruminating from a single perspective, mingles and spins many views for the listener to poke, prod, and fully feel. Warm Chris is a funhouse—fuzzy and inviting, full of sweet, melodic and imaginative disjunction that grows richer right when you least expect. © William Card/Qobuz