FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Eighty-Five: AURORA
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FOR have this eighty-fifth…
part of Modern Heroines, here is an artist who has just released an album that will rank alongside this year’s best. That may seem extremely premature, but I believe that AURORA’s The Gods We Can Touch is exceptional! It has received such positive reviews. I will come to a couple at the end. I wanted to get to a couple of interviews with AURORA. The Norwegian singer, songwriter, dancer and record producer is one of the finest talents in the world. Although it is dangerous and ill-advised to label women as ‘female songwriters’ and differentiate in terms of gender – as they should be seen as songwriters and artists without the need to add gender -, this feature is designed to highlight amazing women who are inspirational and will be future legends. I do think that AURORA is an artist with so many years ahead of her. She began writing her first songs and learning dance at the age of six. After some of her songs were uploaded online and became popular in Norway, she signed a recording contract with Petroleum Records, Decca and Glassnote Records. A sensational artist who has only grown stronger and more complete with each album, I want to head back to her previous L.P. In 2018, she released the E.P., Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1). That was followed by the 2019 album, A Different Kind of Human (Step 2). In 2018, AURORA spoke with the Evening Standard. At this point, she was, perhaps, not as well-known as she is now. A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) definitely established her as a major artist:
“The singer-songwriter, who performs under her first name, didn’t like all the dust, which hurt her eyes, and worried for the plants, which looked so dry. Here in Bergen, a waterfront city surrounded by mountains where it is constantly raining, she fits.
“I feel like a city is strange when there is no source of escape,” she says. “You need mountains, ocean, or forest. My parents have a sailboat and love being in the ocean. I am a forest person. I like to climb trees, to have things over me, to be isolated and hidden.”
Being hidden is going to be harder for her this year as she steps up to bigger things with a second album on which her dark sounds open out to welcome the world. Her comeback single, Queendom, is a whooshing synth-pop anthem of empowerment that sees her setting out a rulebook for her own country. “You have a home in my Queendom,” she sings.
“It’s a celebration of the people who today’s society is not built around,” she explains. “Quiet people, shy people, introverts. The world is based around those who are very loud — we like them for some reason. I am fighting for everything that can’t fight for itself, which is the planet, the children, animals, sometimes the women, sometimes the men.”
This tiny 21-year-old, who grew up in Os, an even quieter area just south of Bergen, seems an unlikely leader of an army, even if she does call her fans “warriors” and her haircut, a sharp blonde bob with two longer strands framing her face, is rather Game of Thrones. She speaks high, soft and giggly, with a trace of a childhood stutter, her hands wafting through the air. I feel like I’ve tumbled into a children’s storybook to meet a magic fairy.
When the museum where she planned to meet me turns out to be closed for an event, she strides in her red shoes, oversized coat and floaty skirt to a nearby café, where they serve “the BEST hot chocolate”. She drinks it as though she cannot comprehend the miracle she is experiencing.
Occasionally she ramps up the kookiness to such an extent that I start to wonder if she’s teasing me. What was the first thing you did when you got home? I ask. “Well, I put on my big grey jumper that I got from my mum. Then I washed my right foot because that’s the one I prefer to wash in the evening. I wash my left foot in the morning. I don’t know why. It’s just a habit I’ve had since I was a child. Just in the sink — I don’t have a bath..”
Okaaay. And how about pets? Did anyone miss her while she was away? “I have an algae ball. He’s big and round and green and kind of furry. He’s called Igor and he likes to be cold, so sometimes he lives in my fridge. I brought him on tour once but it was hard to get him through the airports.” I look this up later and it is a real thing. They’re called marimo, and are popular in Japan.
The overall impression is that here is someone who couldn’t have less in common with the blokey rock of Oasis, which strangely, is probably how you know her. In 2015 she was the voice of the John Lewis Christmas ad — the one with the lonely old man living on the moon — covering the Oasis song Half the World Away on piano. When she was first asked, she thought John Lewis was a man and wondered when she was going to meet him.
Her relaxed, pretty interpretation is her only UK hit, reaching number 11 in the charts, but her own music is a more interesting proposition. Her debut album, All of My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, arrived in 2016 full of icy electronic songs. Check out her creepy ballad Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) for a contrast to that cosy cover version.
“That album was meant to make people look into themselves, to make them feel like individuals that were seen by me and my songs,” she tells me. “The next album, the perspective is wider. It’s more like there’s a whole army instead of one individual”.
I want to come more up to date, as there was a great recent interview. Every interview AURORA does – and there aren’t that many of them – is amazing. You get this wit, humour, incredible personality and warmth. Couple that with amazing talent and hugely impactful songs, and here is somebody primed to be iconic. Official Charts chatted with an artist who, whilst seen as enigmatic, is very accessible and has a hugely wide and adoring fanbase:
“Congratulations - The Gods We Can Touch is officially out into the world. How do you feel?
I'm feeling relieved! And very free. Like I've just become free again after giving birth and I can drink wine again! [The album] feels like a child, it deserves to have the love of the world instead of just me. It's a very nice experience.
The album has such an evocative title - and you've spoken about its connections to ancient myths and mythos like the Greeks. What made you want to tell this kind of story?
The key words [for the this project] are the divine and the human. For me, they're the same and I don't know why we've made them different things. I've been reading up lots on ancient religions and how [the way we worshipped] changed. We used to worship the Earth, and music was a way of connecting us to something divine. I love Greek mythology because [they didn't] put shame on being a woman, or being gay, or being trans or sexual and curious. I'm fascinated by how much we've lost over time, and how much shame we put into beautiful things. Music is a reminder of the thing's we've forgotten.
The Gods We Can Touch is currently tracking to become your first-ever UK Top 10 album. Congratulations! Why do you think this work is resonating so much right now?
Many people just want to be free, to be allowed to be who they are. Maybe we're just tired of being suppressed? It's time for us to unleash the full potential of ourselves and our experience of this beautiful life, where we don't have to fight for the right to exist. I think that's a very important thing. Our obsession with perfection is absurd; we should just worship what's natural and imperfect, like you or me. It's important for me to erase that line”.
Back in October, triple j interviewed AURORA about the recording of her new album and the success she has achieved on TikTok. I have embedded the interview below, but there were a few segments that stood out:
“Her new single ‘Giving In To The Love’ was inspired by Prometheus
AURORA clarified that’s NOT the 2012 film in the Alien franchise, but the OG Greek myth Prometheus.
“I was thinking – one day, as you do - about how he supposedly made mankind in clay, and how he stole the fire from the gods to make us alive and complete us."
“I was thinking about this clay and how much we obsess with this clay that kind of means nothing. And how it seems to distract us from the value of the fire that we keep inside. That’s very sad.”
“The world today makes a lot of people very unhappy because we obsess with these strange things about how we look. So many people base their whole worth on how they look, and they never feel like they look beautiful enough. I find this obsession with beauty both very fascinating and scary."
“It’s kind of about that. I guess: Clay? No, no. Fire? Yes, yes.”
Wiser words have never been spoken.
On ‘Runaway’ going viral on TikTok
“It hit me in quite a magical way," she remarks of the 2015 single, which has found a second life on the platform, soundtracking everything you can imagine, from card tricks to a man walking his pet tiger.
I was very moved by people allowing my song into their hearts… It’s very brave to let anything into your heart and touch it. So, I felt very touched by it.”
“I wrote [‘Runaway’] when I was 11 - very young. It’s very surreal – but I guess it makes sense also, because…
“…whatever comes from an authentic place on the inside will hit authentic places on the outside for other people.”
“I think people needed a song like that,” she continues. “It’s nice to see people uniting during such a separated time and keep themselves busy with this trend – isolated in their rooms. It’s very touching but it’s also very absurd.”
The track, which opened both her debut EP and 2015 album, has been used in over 1.8million videos on TikTok. She’s found great success on the platform too, reaching nearly 4 million followers by just being positively lovely self.
On recording her new album in a castle
‘Giving In To The Love’ arrives ahead of The Gods We Can Touch (out 21 January), which was recorded during a month-long stay at the Insta-worthy Baroniet Rosendal, self-described as a “Manor House from 1665 between fjord, glacier, mountains and waterfalls.”
"It's this little castle here in Norway,” AURORA explains. “I know the people that keep it… warm.”
“You have to jump on a boat, or you can technically walk of course… It takes two hours and you arrive in this beautiful little place called Rosendal. There’s many huge mountains there and they bend over the little village like they’re taking care of it.”
“The castle is 400 years old. It was owned along long time ago by a French baron who was very interested in arts and the healing possibilities of music. That’s why I went there, it just felt right.”
“It was a beautiful adventure. I made this album asking a lot of questions – not really claiming that I have any answers. I’m asking a lot of important questions about this one tiny little life we have been given and whether we spend it in the right way.”
On the difference between Norwegian and Australian bats:
AURORA is embarking on a big European tour next year, and fingers crossed, she’ll make her way back Down Under sooner rather than later.
“I hope. I love being in Australia. I always feel so alive there and I love the bats, and I also love the people. You’re so freaking friendly and it’s so nice.”
Bats > people. But wait… they don’t have bats in Norway?
“We have them, but they’re very small and they’re not as impressive. They have no – erm- confidence”.
The Gods We Can Touch is genuinely one of the finest albums this year. Even if we are in February, one can tell that not that many albums this year will equal its brilliance. The Norwegian artist is hitting a peak that is wonderful to see! There was a lot of love for her third studio album. This is what The Line of Best Fit said in their review:
“Though, here she largely avoids the societal commentary that often permeated her previous work in favour of a more intimate examination of love - and of all the joys and horrors that ensue from it. This juxtaposition is best captured on “A Dangerous Thing”, where AURORA sings “Something about you is soft like an angel / And something inside you is violent and danger”. Again, on “Everything Matters”, the seemingly sweet and innocent (“you sleeping in the seat next to me / Like a baby”) is subverted by Tori Amos-esque, off-kilter piano playing that suggests a brewing storm.
Meanwhile, album highlight and pre-release single “Heathens” blurs the boundary between what is inherently good and bad; offering an ode to the Biblical Eve and painting her as a saviour who gifted humankind free will - acknowledging the inherent terror and boundless opportunity this entaled.
“Exist For Love” best captures the sentiment expressed by this album’s title - the idea of love as something deeply spiritual; the closest thing we have to heaven on earth. The song’s focus begins expansively (“They say there is a war / Between the man and the woman”), but it soon moves to the intimate and personal (“And then you take me in / And everything in me begins to feel like I belong”), which is where she excels. Here, she makes not just love - but her own music - sound like heaven on earth. Here she is not just a musician, but a generational talent capable of creating transfixing otherworlds and, with The Gods We Can Touch, an ethereal masterpiece”.
I wanted to end with AllMusic’s assessment of The Gods We Can Touch. AURORA is an amazing artist whose music is certainly provoking a lot of interest and fascination:
“Whereas her debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, was an introspective work, and follow-ups Step 1: Infections of a Different Kind and Step 2: A Different Kind of Human concerned broader humanity, Norwegian pop star Aurora Aksnes examines behavior through the lens of mythology on her fourth album, The Gods We Can Touch. She came up with the unifying idea after writing the electro-pop ditty "Cure for Me," a song about divesting herself of shame ("I don't need a cure for me"); it made her think of Panacea, the Greek goddess of remedy. AURORA's next step was to rent a castle in the mountains to record the rest of the album (with longtime producer/co-writer Magnus Skylstad and others). Unexpectedly immediate and often warm and restrained despite its elaborate approach, The Gods We Can Touch mixes natural, live-sounding vocals and acoustic instrumental performances with ethereal processed harmonies, drum machines, synthesizers, and various programming. Committing to a more spontaneous sound, songs including "Artemis" and "Exist for Love" were reportedly first takes. The sparse "Artemis" tells its seductive narrative with a Mediterranean flair that includes fingerstyle guitar and bandoneon as well as some of those otherworldly layered vocal harmonies (and Theremin). An album highlight, "Exist for Love," is a more tender, likewise mostly acoustic, track that begins with the line "They say there is a war between the man and the woman." It soon eases into a soaring, strings-swept melody as the singer professes her love. "Exist for Love" isn't the only song here with a dreamy, almost '40s Disney-like musical romanticism that contrasts with club-ier synth-bass tracks to epic effect. Members of the latter category include "Temporary High," a dark, post-punk-shaded outing that warns of fleeting affection, and the forbidden-love anthem "Blood in the Wine," which channels a defiant electro-pop softened with piano and acoustic guitar. The album's varied textures and elevated subject matter culminates in the four-minute outro "A Little Place Called the Moon," which returns to a vintage, theatrical orchestral pop and leaves listeners on a magical note. While The Gods We Can Touch is ultimately a pop record, it only expands upon AURORA's already mystical bearing”.
An artist who is going to be legendary and influence so many others, I am a big fan of AURORA. She is a sensational songwriter and performer. I know that she will get a lot of festival bookings this year. If you have not discovered her music and brilliance, then make sure that you rectify that. I have included a collection of her best tracks in the playlist at the bottom. It is sonic proof that AURORA is an artist…
EVERYONE should know.