The first thing I did after getting home from the Barbican the other week was google ‘Aldous Harding neurodivergent’. It seems I’m not the only one: messageboard threads debate it; fans speculate. Once you’ve see her perform, you would know why: she twisted and contorted herself not like a dancer, but like someone trying to work out the kinks in her own physicality. She also barely spoke to the audience.
Spot this kind of behaviour on the street and you’d walk on, pretending not to see. On stage, one had to look, and it was wholly compelling. Liberating even – especially if, like me, you are neurodivergent (look, I know everyone is now, but I do have an actual diagnosis). We were being forced to confront our own embarrassment. Forced to see someone being exactly who she was.
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Harding is not some case study in affirmative action. First and foremost she is a great artist, and this was the last of three sold-out nights at the Barbican. Her band – guitar, bass, drums, keys and a bit of harp – were delicate and subtle, supplementing but never overwhelming her vocals. Harding’s voice itself was a strange thing, sometimes strangulated, sometimes squeaky, sometimes true: it did what suited the song, not what one might expect, even when the lyrics made very little apparent sense, as on ‘Leathery Whip’.
