The songs on Aldous Harding’s fourth album are extraordinary, performing feats ordinarily associated with Zen mantras. Days after listening to ‘Leathery Whip’, the chants of Harding and backing vocalist, Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods, continue to echo through the mind: “Here comes life with his leathery whip.” By extension, the tracks are dialogues between different facets of Harding, testing the listener’s progress in enlightenment.

Lester Bangs considered the sound of Nico akin to signals from the womb, and Warm Chris fits that evocation, possessing the open rehearsal feel of The Velvet Underground in action.

Aldous communes above instruments that clamour to be heard: shuffling drums on lead single ‘Lawn’; the morse code parp of ‘Tick Tock’; psychedelic horn blasts on ‘Fever’.

Nico also scared the bejaysus out of Bangs, and something in Warm Chris is equally esoteric and unsettling. The carousel caper of ‘Ennui’, for example, is oddly threatening, a clown drowning you into the candy floss machine. Warm Chris is totally enthralling.

9/10

Out now