Judging by the spellbinding songs on Aldous Harding’s second album, the party of the title isn’t a right old knees-up with jelly and ice cream – more likely she’s party to a crime of passion. These songs are full of worried wonderings and torrid, erotic declarations – “My mouth is wet / Don’t you forget it” – sung in an extraordinarily dextrous and perhaps divisive voice that ranges from Josephine Foster’s warble to Nico’s sonorous tenor. Amid the slightly humdrum instrumentation of guitar and piano, other voices intrude: a startled but delighted “Hey!” on the exquisite Imagining My Man (featuring Perfume Genius in a subtle duet), and, on the otherwise straightforward I’m So Sorry, little Twombly-style smudges of saxophone and backing vocals. It’s an album that creates a very particular headspace of desire, paranoia and possibility.
