Aldous Harding @ Kelvingrove Bandstand, 3 Jun
Aldous Harding took to Kelvingrove Bandstand as part of the Big Nights Out summer series. The singer-songwriter's performance was full of strangeness and atmosphere, but we wonder if she would have been better served in a more intimate venue
Kelvingrove Bandstand must be one of the nicest places to see a gig in Glasgow in the summer. Each year its varied programme sells well, a real reflection of the city’s appetite for outdoor live music. But the open-air venue comes with an obvious pitfall: the Scottish weather. After a week of unusually warm sunshine, it felt like especially bad luck that the day Aldous Harding rolled into town was the day a storm arrived to bring an end to all that. A day of heavy rain preceded the gig, which might have something to do with the modest numbers in attendance, who huddled on the wet concrete, listening diligently.
Luckily, the rain held off for the duration of Harding’s 90-minute set, though the chilly temperature was enough to catch her attention. “I’m really cold – you guys must be so cold,” she said.
“This is summer!” a member of the raincoat mafia in attendance shouted back.
It was one of only a couple of moments of chat with the audience from the New Zealand singer who admitted, “I’m not much of a chatterbox, but I am okay up here.” There’s a shyness to her stage presence, which lines up well with her hard-to-define brand of ambient indie folk.
These are woozy, off-kilter songs full of weird imagery that invite the listener to interpret them in a variety of ways. What do they mean? Do they mean anything at all? This is particularly true of her latest album, Train on the Island, which makes up the bulk of the setlist and brings the show some of its strongest moments, such as the twinkly duet Venus in the Zinnia and the synthy disturbing I Ate the Most.
Harding and her band give these songs room to breathe, leaning into their strangeness and the atmosphere they create. In that respect, the venue was perhaps not the best fit for the music. Outdoors, some of that tension dissipated. As the sun began to set during the show’s encore (a solo rendition of Riding that Symbol followed by old favourites Imagining My Man and Designer), it was tempting to imagine how things might have played out differently in a more enclosed space. A small dark room might have suited Harding better, drawing the audience further into the peculiar world of her music.