Designer

About

In some way, Aldous Harding’s third album, <i>Designer</i>, feels lighter than her first two—particularly 2017’s stunning, stripped-back, despairing <i>Party</i>. “I felt freed up,” Harding (whose real name is Hannah) tells Apple Music. “I could feel a loosening of tension, a different way of expressing my thought processe. There was a joyful loosening in an unapologetic way. I didn’t try to fight that.” Where <i>Party</i> kept the New Zealand singer-songwriter's voice almost constantly exposed and bare, here there’s more going on: a greater variety of instruments (especially percussion), bigger rhythm, additional vocals that add harmonies and echoes to her chameleonic voice, which flips between breathy baritone and wispy falsetto. “I wanted to show that there are lots of ways to work with space, lots of ways you can be seriou,” she say. “You don’t have to be serious to be seriou. I’m not a role model, that’s just how I felt. It’s a light, unapologetic approach based on what I have and what I know and what I think I know.” Harding attributes this broader musical palette to the many places and settings in which the album was written, including on tour. “It’s an incredibly diverse record, but it somehow feels part of the same brand,” she say. “They were all written at very different times and in very different surrounding, but maybe that’s what makes it feel complete.” The bare, devastating “Heaven Is Empty” came together on a long train ride and “The Barrel” on a bike ride, while intimate album closer “Pilot” took all of ten minutes to compose. “It was stream of consciousne, and I don’t usually write like that,” she say. “Once I’d written it all down, I think I made one or two changes to the last verse, but other than that, I did not edit that stream of consciousness at all.” .

via Apple Music

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