After a year-long delay, this evening at the Tramshed felt like a sweet family gathering with New Zealand’s Aldous Harding at the head of the table. I say family gathering because it was Monmouthshire’s Rockfield Studios where Harding recorded last year’s Warm Chris and 2019’s Designer – with contributions from Cardiff-based collaborator H. Hawkline, also this evening’s support act.

In the absence of a band, Hawkline – aka Huw Evans – brought along an electric guitar and a vintage-looking tape machine storing his newly released LP Milk For Flowers. After a short-lived monologue, but not before demanding a more excited round of applause, Evans pressed play, singing along to an intimate 26-minute long set. The rawness in his voice, carrying themes of loss and grief, dripped upon his hometown crowd like an embodiment of his album title. All the swaying eventually ended in a loving, well-deserved cheer, making way for Aldous Harding 30 minutes later.

Her setlist was perfectly knit by the two Rockfield recordings. While these have revived Harding from sorrowful realms to poppier folk stylings, the show remained firm, starry-eyed, and conspicuously bare. Her world is curious, inward, and occasionally comic, merged by a band who knows how to follow a shapeshifting voice – notably so on Leathery Whip, where Harding sings “I’m a little bit older but I remain unchanged / And the folks who want me don’t have the things I’m chasing, no way”. A treat awaits here in the chorus when a high-pitched voice is summoned in the most amusing – albeit threatening – way (“Here comes life with his leathery, leathery whip”).

The highlights of the night, however, were the hip-swaying Fever, The Barrel, and Fixture Picture. Towards the end, she also braved fan-favourite ballad Imagining My Man from her second studio album, 2017’s Party. This song glistened with dark murmurs as she pondered over realisations about love and intimacy, only to break down in the end through coarse and aggravated vocals that reminded of Angel Olsen’s beginnings. In the midst of avant-garde, Imagining My Man touched for what felt like a split second upon returning to more upbeat grooves. Aldous Harding is one of a kind, and her Cardiff audience was moved.

Aldous Harding + H. Hawkline, Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 25 Apr

words PETRE-ADRIAN BANUTA photos EMMA LEWIS