Aldous Harding w/ Yves Jarvis at Turf Club, St. Paul (15 April 2019)

Aldous Harding Setlist

1. Designer
2. Zoo Eyes
3. Treasure
4. The Barrel
5. Damn
6. Weight of the Planets
7. Heaven is Empty
8. Pilot
9. Blend
   — Encore —
10. Right Down the Line (Gerry Rafferty cover)
11. Old Peel

Aldous Harding Tour Dates

For New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding, it’s a brave new world—

Already buzzing with critics and selling out most of her upcoming shows, her third full-length is called Designer (4AD Records) and is due out April 26 with a busy spring and summer ahead, culminating in mid-July at London’s Hyde Park in front of 100,000+, but we managed to see her at the much more intimate Turf Club in St. Paul.

For Montreal-based Yves Jarvis, it is a new world as well– having released The Same But By Different Means (ANTI- Records) under this name after being once known as Un Blonde (and his given name of Jean-Sebastian Audet) and finds some similarities (other than a simple name change and high afro) with pre-fame Prince.

Like the prolific Minneapolis artist, Jarvis is equally serious and has a preset internal standard of musical excellence about his output, has committed himself to insular composing of a complete song per day at one point, played the many different instruments (as well as did the cover art) on his record, and blends the elements of R&B/soul with more experimental sounds and genres.

With forest-like sounds, bird and insect chirping, and churning wind as backing ambiance resonating throughout his thirty-five minute opening set, Jarvis managed fourteen compositions in that brief time, most coming off as evolving musical sketches instead of finished drawings, creatively both asking and answering on multi levels of consciousness, and the product of the process of creation, rather than just the end result.

The St. Paul venue for this show can often be boisterous, filled with Pabst-swilling hipsters and area blue collar residents, which is why it was so surprising to hear complete silence as Aldous Harding took to the stage for her headlining sixty-five minute set. Before she entered, her band went up first, took their positions and just waited quiet and motionless, as the crowd came around to do the same.

After Harding’s 2017 release Party (produced by PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish) went on to critical acclaim and ended up winning the Taite Music Prize, expectations were high for the follow-up, done again with Parish over a couple week’s in the producer’s native Bristol and Wales.

Harding began with the upcoming album’s title track, set to a slow beat that Duluth’s Low would envy and vocals that could move from a higher-pitched young and innocent tone like early Kate Bush, to something deeper and smokier, like a Marianne Faithful or Nico, at a turn of a phrase.

She was still developing this vision when we first saw her in 2016, but has noticeably musically matured into a subtle and low-key force of nature. All but the first track of the new record were played live, though several of the songs like ‘Pilot’ were composed and debuted live on her last tour.

After the first few songs on guitar, Harding moved to piano for ‘Damn’, first exhaling frustratingly presumably about the tuning or specific setup. “Why must you drag all the hopes out of bed? I blame the seasons, we all have our reasons” Harding sings over a slow keyboard melody, mindful that the spaces and the sparseness, are as important as any notes played or lyrics sung.

A swoop of synth strings punctuated the end of a line on the gentle folk of ‘Weight of the Planets’ and the goth heaviness of ‘Heaven is Empty’ (that sounded similar in theme to Bowie’s ‘Black Star’) was simply composed traveling by train. Harding commits live to her performances, often staring wide-eyed or focused in place, sometimes with eyes rolled back as she delivers a key lyric.

“I’m ashamed of the quiet but I want to be silent, always practicing, still no grace” Harding sings on the introspective of ‘Pilot’, a somewhat sad existential self-conversation admitting faults and questioning her own fears and anxieties. 2016’s ‘Blend’ would end the main set, but the well-behaved crowd would not go quietly until an encore was answered, and the band returned for two more songs.

Changing from her handwritten setlist notes, ‘Elation’ was instead replaced by a slow-turning Gerry Rafferty cover of ‘Right Down the Line’, with Harding emoting in a high-key, like ‘Wuthering Heights’-era Kate Bush. “This is a new one- it’s not on Designer, it’s not anywhere” Harding said, then picking up a drumstick and black ceramic coffee cup to use as island-like tinking percussion for her most upbeat tempo song of the evening, ‘Old Peel’ which would close out things.

Two artists, both equally internally focused on bringing their musical visions to life, made for an entertaining and surprisingly subdued evening at an unlikely venue –the names Yves Jarvis and Aldous Harding may both now just be a whisper from a music-savvy connoisseur, but their own talents say that secret will grow louder and more known, as both enter their own brave new worlds.

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