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- May 8, 2026The music will make sense each time. Malleable yet singular, Train On The Island keeps one foot planted on solid ground and the other stepping through a portal into Harding’s weird and wild imagination. It’s a silly, colorful triumph.
- May 8, 2026These 10 songs represent her ideal playground, a space bright and broad enough for her dreamlike visions and mutable voice to take whatever shapes her imagination allows. .... arish knows the seance-like arrangement of microphones that will allow the transformation to occur.
- May 7, 2026A dozen listens to Train on the Island, the New Zealand songwriter's mesmerizing fifth record, will yield a dozen interpretations, a century's worth of pondering and re-pondering condensed into 40 minutes.
- May 7, 2026A melodically gifted singer-songwriter, music that’s subtle but never bland; these are disarmingly straightforward pleasures that all the strangeness – mannered or otherwise – can’t obscure.
- May 5, 2026What matters is that Harding remains a fascinating songwriting provocateur, preternaturally discipline, but able to trip emotional wires you might not even know you had. [Jun 2026, p.82]
- May 5, 2026Aldous Harding's fifth album doesn't deviate much from her winning formula, but there are small flourishes peppered throughout to keep it feeling fresh.
- May 5, 2026She's radio-ready with the first cut from Train On The Island. Taster single "One Stop" is the earworm of the album. [Jun 2026, p.24]
- May 5, 2026Venus In The Zinnia is an engaging duet with Welsh musician and kindred spirit H. Hawkline. A lot of the other songs may be less immediate but still have their strengths.
- May 8, 2026Everything played is of course letter perfect with the talent on hand. One thing is for sure and it’s that the album is very much a mixed bag. There are a few too many unexciting turnouts along the way (“Worms,” “San Francisco”) that put Train on the Island near the back of Harding’s otherwise impressive catalog.
