Warm Chris

Aldous Harding

explicit

Released on 25/03/22 by Flying Nun Records
Main artists: Aldous Harding
Genre: Folk
Distinctions: Pitchfork: Best New Music Uncut: Album of the Month

Available in

16-Bit/44.1 kHz Stereo

Unlimited Streaming

Listen to this album in high quality now on our apps

Start my trial period and start listening to this album

Enjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription

Digital Download

Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.

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

More info

Warm Chris

Aldous Harding

You are currently listening to samples.

Listen to over 100 million songs with an unlimited streaming plan.

Listen to this playlist and more than 100 million songs with our unlimited streaming plans.

From $17.49/month

Ennui Explicit