“Welcome to paradise” proclaimed Sea Power frontman, Jan, during their Saturday night set. It could have seemed an incongruous statement, being made from atop a scaffolding-constructed stage in a cow-barn, and yet Krankenhaus 2023 has a good claim to be festival perfection.
“What am I doing in Dubai?”, asks Aldous Harding at the start of ‘Zoo Eyes’, the third track on her third album, ‘Designer’. It would be a good question for almost anyone, but seems particularly pertinent for a New Zeland born avant-garde singer-songwriter. We never find out the answer, it being Harding’s practice to sing in riddles (a latter section of the song goes something like “I drove my inner child to a show / We talked all the way home / In the nectar”). But if that’s a problem then it is the only one with this perfectly wonderful, constantly inventive, total ear-worm of a record.
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