From the very opening of New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding’s newest album, Train on the Island, there’s a sense of distance. It’s as if she wants to be as personal as possible with the lyrics while at the same time hiding behind a veil of humour and obscure imagery. On “I Ate the Most”, the album’s first track, you’re immediately hit by the opening lyrics: “I’m not afraid, like you’re not gay / and you’re not old, like I’m on the spectrum”. There’s something deeply confessional about the song, which later goes on to discuss personal struggles with eating, but Harding is constantly defining herself by things that she’s not, keeping some distance between her true thoughts and the listener.

My immediate instinct with Train was to compare it to an album like Big Thief’s U.F.O.F—one of my favourite albums of all time—which was released under the same record label. They’re both peaceful, folky albums, using layers of guitars and unusual compositional choices to wrap the listener up in a blanket of scary-yet-comforting sound. However, this comparison offers little more than disappointment. Harding’s lyrics, whilst occasionally thought-provoking, feel much vaguer than Adrianne Lenker’s. It’s like if you took the impossibly gorgeous songwriting that makes U.F.O.F so eerily beautiful and drenched it in irony, leaving the imagery feeling disjointed and slightly aimless. 

The more fitting comparison, then, is with MJ Lenderman, another songwriter known for his use of irony, particularly in his 2024 album Manning Fireworks. Harding’s seemingly random lines about “pray[ing] for the incel” or meeting “the real John Cale” and watching him eat rice are somewhat reminiscent of Lenderman’s nonsense references (“there’s men and then there’s movies / then there’s men and Men in Black”), except Train on the Island’s take on this style of writing ends up feeling purposeless. Unlike Lenderman’s use of self-deprecating humour in Manning Fireworks, which serves as a kind of character study of his “loser” persona, Harding seems to deploy humour and vagueness simply for the sake of being mysterious. 

The near absence of Harding’s voice throughout brings more focus, then, to the album’s stunning atmosphere and instrumentation. In “Worms”, for example, waves of pedal steel guitars and relaxed basslines wash over the listener as Harding moves quickly through imagery of “hills and plants”, to an “annex” set on fire, to a lighthouse covered in “rails and bright ribbons”. It’s a little hard getting personally invested in the lyrics, but the scenes they set are undeniably pretty and complement the atmosphere well. Similarly atmospheric are “If Lady Does It”, with its gentle guitars and light drumming reminiscent of rain, and “San Francisco”, which features sparse synthesiser chords and more weeping pedal steel, fading almost to nothing before faster acoustic guitars push their way into the mix.

Train on the Island’s most memorable moments, however, come when Harding trades the delicateness of the music in favour of being more dynamic. The lead single “One Stop” was a perfect choice to get people excited about the album’s eclectic sound, with a constantly moving guitar line that suggests a train moving forward. The vocal melodies float above with a slight jankiness in their rhythms, making Harding’s cries of “why wouldn’t I wanna meet you” feel unbalanced and mysterious. 

“One Stop” is also one of the two moments across the album where I would argue Harding gets closest to shedding her persona and allowing a hint of vulnerability to shine through. Towards the end of the song, her vocals move from her whispery high register to a lower, wavering voice as she sings out a call of “I’ll never do it again / unless you wanna do it again”. It’s a similar case on “What Am I Gonna Do?”, one of the more intense, bass-heavy songs on the record, as the music suddenly pauses and Harding’s seldom-seen middle register returns, crying out in a voice more emotional than we’ve heard anywhere else on the album, before it is quickly swallowed up by the rest of the music. These two songs make for what feels like Train on the Island’s most personal moments, and it’s interesting that they’re both marked by a noticeable shift in her voice, a brief moment where the higher, mysterious quality of her singing is traded for something more natural, almost desperate sounding. However, whilst “What Am I Gonna Do?” is the most emotionally piercing moment of the album, this brief glimpse of what is possibly the true Harding is still plagued by disjointedness. In this song specifically, the little harp plucks feel unfortunately random and out of character (the first time I listened, I was reminded of the equally strange string plucks in Morrissey’s baffling single “Make-Up Is a Lie” and burst out laughing).

The following song, “Riding That Symbol”, returns to the unfortunate blandness of the rest of the album. Harding’s voice is gorgeous, offering up a cascade of whispers over a subdued acoustic guitar, but it ultimately doesn’t amount to anything particularly interesting. By the time we get to the final track, “Coats”, the album hasn’t reached any sense of closure. It’s a shame, too, as this song would have worked especially well earlier in the track list. Its imagery, whilst still frustratingly ambiguous, is at least memorable, describing “blue women” and “big thick coats on the dogs of people”.

I think this is the overarching theme that prevents me from engaging any closer with this album. The music, despite all of its intricacies and prettiness, rarely complements the songwriting, which often fades into the background as Harding’s impressive voice is reduced to simply a texture in the mix. When the lyrics are especially strong, such as on title track “Train on the Island”, where Harding sings about going through the motions and feeling a need to “dance just to dance”, the music comes across as a little too barebones. On this song in particular, the lovely melody of the verses vanishes in favour of an overly repetitive chorus, complete with a much sparser sound, a tedious bassline and an image of a train that never goes anywhere. Rather than travelling on this titular train, the album unfortunately just meanders around on foot. The sights it wanders past are impressive, but the beautiful scenery is shrouded in a cloud of thick, grey smoke.