Gallery and Review by Ethan Kaiser

September 11th, 2026

Between songs of Aldous Harding’s performance, I was afraid of the sound of my shoes slightly sticking to the floor. As I walked between the aisles of the seated crowd at the Howard Theatre in Washington DC, they were so loud that I thought I’d get in some sort of trouble. The entire audience seemed to have silently agreed that her encapsulating performance on stage is not to be interrupted until given permission. 

The evening began with Sam Burton, a folk music singer-songwriter, joined by Matt Popieluch (aka Big Search). Burton’s acoustic set got off to an auspicious start when a woman in the front row shouted out that the spotlight was too bright. His songs covered feelings of guilt, acceptance, and growth after tragedy, in a more traditional folk style that draws influence from Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and Bert Jansch. His new album, Fairweather Friend, is set to release on October 30th. 

Aldous Harding then took center stage on a stool with her acoustic guitar, surrounded by a collection of props, from a water bottle and a sugar-free Red Bull, to hand percussion instruments like a tambourine and cabasa, while her band lined the outer rim of the stage, as if they were accompanying a one-woman show. This vibe would prove appropriate for how the show felt to the multi-generational audience, who were intently listening and observing as Harding performed with each song feeling like a vignette of a different character that she was creating on the spot. 

Harding’s choreography consists of odd and exasperated facial expressions, neck craning, and strained postures. The performance art accompanies the lulling music that is hard to place in a genre, somewhere between alternative/gothic folk and chamber pop. The subtle movements, looping sounds, and indecipherable lyrics all build the lore that is Aldous Harding. 

As you watch the weird movements and hear the sounds and words unfold, naturally you may want answers – “what does it mean?” - but Harding does not provide them. Instead, the audience simply must think of each song and its accompanying body shifts and facial expressions as a slice of life that we’ve been given a brief glimpse of. Each of these vignettes are just small parts of Aldous herself, but you won’t get to really know her. Perhaps that’s what the lesson is from her music –how can we ever get to truly know someone? How do we truly know ourselves? And if we can’t ever know anyone, then why not be weird and different? She emphasizes this with the questions she repeats throughout her song lyrics – “Why wouldn’t I want to meet you?”

The audience grappled with these, and certainly countless other thoughts, as everyone seemed so enraptured that they forgot to breathe during songs. While the band shifted spots and Aldous changed the tuning on her guitar or took a sip of her drinks, none of the thousand people in the theatre made a sound until acknowledged by Harding. I feared snapping pictures in these moments as though my camera shutter would break the fourth wall of her performance. 

Harding played through the entirety of her latest album, Train on the Island, which was released in May of this year to glowing praise, and is one of the year’s very best. About halfway through the set, Aldous removed her baseball-style jacket and stood up to the microphone to sing most of the remaining songs while twirling the strings from her white shirt and outstretch her arms, at one point laying down the stage to sunbathe in the rainbow-colored overhead lights. The act ended with “Coats”, a song that she introduced to the audience by stating “this is a song about me”. Everyone in attendance was glad to have had the opportunity to get just a small introduction into her weird, yet honest world, even if only getting a small, unguided glimpse of what that is.