The Sampler: Aldous Harding, Sunreturn, Syl Johnson

Tony Stamp reviews the latest album by theatrical folk maverick Aldous Harding, a wildly diverse array of talent on the first compilation from Auckland label Sunreturn, and a selection of sixties soul classics by the much-sampled Syl Johnson.

Warm Chris by Aldous Harding

Each time Aldous Harding releases an album, the music press clamours to figure out where she’s coming from. What does it all mean? For her latest, there seems to be a wave of resignation that no one’s ever going to figure it out. Or maybe that there is nothing to figure out. Harding has been riding a wave that’s hers alone for a while now, and the beauty of her songwriting is that no matter how well-thought-out it is, it feels spur of the moment and impulsive. 

And as any fan of instrumental music will attest, lack of meaning doesn’t make something meaningless. And these tracks are nine of the finest aural Rorschach tests you’ll find.

Harding has always been theatrical, and on Warm Chris, it feels more than ever like she’s playing a different character in each song. Mostly that comes down to how she uses her voice. On Designer she mostly stayed inside her soprano range, and listening back to that album it feels like a certain amount of weirdness may have been sacrificed for the sake of consistency.

On tracks like ‘Fever’, she pushes her voice down a register, over the sort of jaunty, upbeat tune that defines this album. ‘Lawn’ is even sunnier, her voice up high again, adding to the pastoral atmosphere. 

Musically the album's subdued - there’s nothing as dramatic here as ‘Horizon’, from her album Party, but there is a lot of variety, and that extends to accents.

On the title track, she leans into her Kiwi twang, but there’s a lot of Australia in the vowels. On ‘Tick Tock’ she tries on Scottish for the word ‘country’, and ‘Passion Babe’ is something else entirely - some posh Englishness maybe, but also a sort of disaffected carelessness in the way she holds each note... or doesn’t.

Speaking to Pitchfork recently about the way she puts on voices, Harding said "I don’t feel like different kinds aren’t mine to use", and I get that this is part of her artistic impulse, but I also think it speaks to the thing people undervalue about her - she’s really funny. 

That part of the puzzle landed for me when I saw her live. The way she acts on impulse, whether it’s pulling faces, changing her posture or her voice, feels a bit like a kid being silly, and it's all intentionally amusing. Plus she tells jokes - in between songs and within them. 

I think her great skill at arranging chords and writing melodies made people adopt a certain reverence when dealing with her, but you only need to watch her recent music videos to get that laughter is a legitimate response.

Calling a song ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain’ is pretty funny on its face. When you realise it’s flipping the line “you made such a mountain/ she won’t be coming round” it’s even more wryly amusing. And musically it’s a standout - a sparse piano riff that hovers around the Twilight Zone theme, later joined by thematically appropriate banjo.

Aldous Harding has been based in Wales these past few years, but speaking to interviewers from her mother’s home in Geraldine, outside Christchurch, she said that’s where she feels most at home. 

She seems to strike people as an enigma, but honestly, I feel like I’ve known plenty of Aldous Hardings - people who grew up in a small town, who happen to have an endless well of creativity inside them, just waiting for an outlet. Outside of her huge musical gifts, she’s just never shied away from her impulses, however silly they may be. When I see headlines wondering who the real Aldous Harding is, I think ‘she’s been right in front of us this whole time’.

See You On The Horizon by Sunreturn

The roster of small to mid-level independent record labels in New Zealand is in fine form in 2022. This has been predicted since the major labels began consolidating, and streaming started to affect revenue, and my impression from the outside is that between Trace Untrace in Dunedin, Melted Ice Cream in Christchurch, Meetinghouse in Wellington and others, there’s a really vibrant selection of boutique outfits with a healthy community around each one. And they all have their own distinct personality.

Sunreturn is an Auckland label that, full disclosure, is run by former RNZ Music employee Zac Arnold. And it’s a testament to his particular taste in music that the label’s first compilation is so varied, yet somehow all hangs together.

The music on this compilation See You on the Horizon runs from hardcore punk to Krautrock tribute, hip hop to dancefloor fillers, and if I had to pick a throughline, it’d be the slightly anti-establishment vibe that runs through it.

‘Dumb For My Age’ by Dateline is a classically NZ bit of self-deprecation, but it’s the ‘for my age’ part that sticks, part giving up, part sarcastic kiss-off. There’s a line about getting “five stars for being only half bad” which sums up the self-awareness of it all, and the wobbly guitars that intentionally dip in and out of tune hark back to Pavement and Sonic Youth, two relatively mainstream bands who loved to subvert their position.

At the other end of the spectrum is Amamelia, whose rave anthem ‘So Good’ uses aspects of Madchester, trip-hop, progressive breaks and tropicalia to create a nostalgic bit of dancefloor action. Fellow cult-favourite party starters Baby Zionov and Powernap are here too, sharing their respective four-to-the-floor anthems.

Near the end of the comp is its one hip hop track, courtesy of DlblDbl featuring LVJ and Pollyhill. Called ‘Big Mike’, it feels like a rebuke of industry gatekeepers, with the repeated line “we don’t need you anymore”

It’s that attitude - headstrong, unconcerned with the mainstream - that fuels the album. It’s the connective tissue between the way DblDbl spits bars about independence and the way the band NT Honey embraces lo-fi recording on their song ‘Runaway’, opting for authenticity over studio polish.

I’m someone drawn to eclecticism, so Sunreturn’s first compilation has that going for it from the get-go. Each track has a sense of fun and experimentation, and a sort of lack of caring that’s its main positive attribute. 

The song ‘Time’ by Green Grove is wisely saved till last. It’s a hypnotic motorik groove with baritone interjections, and in a stroke of genius is about the passage of time, a concept that goes hand in hand with methodically-timed music like krautrock. “It ticks and it toks” sings Durham Fenwick, appropriately.

Self-aware and a bit sarcastic, it’s a great way to end this selection of music, diverse but like-minded, and unconcernedly doing its own thing.

The Complete Twinight Singles by Syl Johnson

When soul singer Syl Johnson died in February at the age of 85, outlets like The Guardian and Rolling Stone lead their coverage with how often his music had been sampled or repurposed by modern producers. In the eighties and nineties samples of his tracks featured on tracks by the likes of Public Enemy and Cypress Hill, which led to a resurgence in profile for Johnson. In an interview in 2010, he talked about being underrated during his career, saying he was “more soul than Marvin [Gaye], more funk than James [Brown]. I’ve been underrated all my life.”

Listening to The Complete Twinight Singles, which collects the songs from fifteen 45s he released over just four years in the late ‘60s, it’s hard not to agree. Twenty-nine tracks and not one dud among them.

RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan once called Syl Johnson ‘an unsung pioneer of musical fusion’, in regards to the way his music influenced so much hip hop, and aside from the musical snippets rap producers would go on to use, it's there in this music’s attitude too.

“Annie Got Hot Pants Power” has funny, lascivious lyrics like “I got a crook in my neck from looking your way/ you caused a ten car wreck just yesterday”, and its groove and precise musicianship blow me away every time I listen to it.

The lyrics to ‘Different Strokes’ are likewise surprisingly ribald for a song written in 1967. It’s also his most sampled - specifically his grunts from the opening drum break, which also features Minnie Ripperton giggling. 

But while Johnson could do funk and sleaze with the best of them - and the horn line on that track really is one of the best - he also tackled social issues, most famously with the song ‘Is It Because I’m Black’, written in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King. The plainspoken simplicity of its lyrics is still heartbreaking. 

‘Together Forever’ is another song that confronts racism with empathy, this time adding to the emotion with an exquisite string section. 

After Syl Johnson left Twinight Records and signed to Hi, he had the biggest hit of his career with ‘Take Me To The River] written by Al Green and later covered by Talking Heads.

Decades later when he got wind of how many rap albums his music was on, he enlisted kids in his neighbourhood to listen to hip hop cassettes and report back to him if they found him on any. He sued Kanye West and Jay-Z successfully, and in 2010 told the New York Times, “I’ll never have to worry about money again because of the rappers”.

His place in history is ensured by the conversation happening between his music and all the hip hop that drew on it, and going back to listen to the concentration of quality during this four year period on Twinight Records, I’m glad his legacy never faded.