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- Summary: Aldous Harding recorded her fifth full-length release in Wales with co-producer John Parish. It features a guest appearance by H. Hawkline's Huw Evans and contributions from Joe Harvey-Whyte, Mali Llywelyn, Thomas Poli, and Sebastian Rochford.
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- Record Label: 4AD
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 14
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Mixed: 0 out of 14
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Negative: 0 out of 14
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May 8, 2026The music will make sense each time. Malleable yet singular, Train On The Island keeps one foot planted on solid ground and the other stepping through a portal into Harding’s weird and wild imagination. It’s a silly, colorful triumph.
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May 12, 2026Nobody is making music quite like Harding, she is a special, singular artist. Just be sure to take the same approach to interpreting her lyrics as you would to any great work of surrealism; the joy is in the wondering, not the knowing.
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May 15, 2026This glorious weirdness was present in Harding’s earlier work but feels like the main event on Train on the Island. It never intrudes on what can be enjoyed as fantastically crafted songs, but accentuates the beguiling personality that makes them more than that.
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May 5, 2026What matters is that Harding remains a fascinating songwriting provocateur, preternaturally discipline, but able to trip emotional wires you might not even know you had. [Jun 2026, p.82]
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May 11, 2026The result is a beautiful album that offers out tantalising strands, begging to be put together. It may be an impossible task, but it’s one to revel in nonetheless.
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May 7, 2026A melodically gifted singer-songwriter, music that’s subtle but never bland; these are disarmingly straightforward pleasures that all the strangeness – mannered or otherwise – can’t obscure.
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May 8, 2026Everything played is of course letter perfect with the talent on hand. One thing is for sure and it’s that the album is very much a mixed bag. There are a few too many unexciting turnouts along the way (“Worms,” “San Francisco”) that put Train on the Island near the back of Harding’s otherwise impressive catalog.