Culture

Aldous Harding Lives In The Haunted Ether With ‘Zoo Eyes’

By: Cyrena Touros I NPR
Posted on: Tuesday, October 8, 2019

< < Back to aldous-harding-lives-in-the-haunted-ether-with-zoo-eyes

If the forces of the universe wreak havoc in threes, then Aldous Harding follows tradition with her co-directed visual treatment for “Zoo Eyes,” the third off-kilter video from her latest (and third!) album, Designer (which we listed as one of our favorite albums of April).

The lush and mountainous landscape of Harding’s native New Zealand are frequently a filmmaker’s fodder for the otherworldly, and here — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — the backdrop resembles nothing so much as the set where the Teletubbies tumbled around. It’s certainly wrestling with some childhood motifs — the Pierrot costume, the purple figure like a kid in a sophisticated bedsheet, the hulking-but-gentle giant like a giraffe drawing gone wrong — and the way they amble on their lonely quest to nowhere.

It’s a beautiful companion to her meditation on a meltdown, in which time slows and dissolves. And in case it wasn’t official before, it is now: Aldous Harding is living in the haunted ether.