At festivals this summer, she wore burnt-orange workmen’s clothes and a porkpie hat, her eyes twitching, her mouth gurning like a silent film comedian.
Take the video for her new single, Zoo Eyes: she’s dressed like an overpainted clown from a Jodorowsky film. On stage and in videos, the strangeness of Harding is intensified. This is a large part of the appeal of this New Zealand musician, whose music is as disquietingly beautiful and unsettling as her image. To be fixed by her gaze is to be profoundly unnerved.
