Aldous Harding Tightens the Songcraft on ‘Train On the Island’

Aldous Harding’s oddball persona has long drawn attention, but Train On the Island makes a case for the songs themselves. The album, produced by PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish, channels her buzzing interior into ten tracks that feel less like whimsical detours and more like considered compositions. The record lands as her most musically assured work yet, leaning into melodic clarity without dulling the edges.

Earlier this year, Harding turned heads with a lullaby cameo on Sleaford Mods’ “Elitist G.O.A.T.” and the single “One Stop,” both of which hinted at the directness that shapes this album. On Train On the Island, that single’s percussive piano arpeggios sit alongside the gentler tinkering of “I Ate The Most,” a track that carries echoes of Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ instrumental approach or a bohemian take on The Neptunes. The music feels rooted, even when the lyrics veer into abstraction.

Harding addresses bulimia, the fog of medication, and unwanted advances, often wrapping uneasy subjects in deceptively breezy arrangements. The title track marries a plodding, almost cheerful energy to its discomfort, and her vocal performance stands out as one of the album’s most subtly striking. Across the record, her voice bends words into new shapes. On “Worms,” the enunciation of “brewery,” “rocks,” and “la profesora” makes them sound like they belong together. “If Lady Does It” arrives in a warble that recalls the fluid sputter of a fretless bass in death metal, while the talk-sung chorus of “Coats” turns a phrase about “big thick coats on the dogs of people just trying to help” into something strangely sticky.

Moments of recurrence hold the album together. When the “why wouldn’t I wanna meet ya?” refrain from “One Stop” resurfaces in “San Francisco,” it feels both unmoored and exactly what the sequence was building toward. Harding’s absurdity hasn’t disappeared, but here it serves a batch of songs that don’t rely on persona to connect.