All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend is a somewhat convoluted name for an album as sharp and concise as Aurora's debut.
After breaking onto the Norwegian music scene at the tail-end of 2014, the singer's sweeping electro-pop quickly found itself a global audience. Now, with her debut album - after making the wise decision to drop a few of the older tracks to avoid the potential for staleness - Aurora has produced an exquisitely crafted record.
There's an eeriness lurking beneath the beauty of opening track, 'Runaway' - its cavernous clicks and echoes make themselves at home before it bursts into something warmer. Lyrically too, it's unsettling. Filtered through Aurora's native Norwegian tongue, the English language becomes something strange and new, as if - freed from grammatical trappings and learned cliche - she can twist it into new shapes and forms. "So many souls, that lost control / Where did they fall?" she asks on 'Under The Water', "And to the deep, what do they see?"
'I Went Too Far' drags the album's dark undertones to the surface. The disco-inflected cries of the song's chorus - "Give me some love and hold me tight" - are made infinitely more sinister by the verses that surround it: "I went too far when I was begging on my knees / When I cut my hands, so you could stand and watch me bleed."
There's a nordic folk song hiding in the bombast of 'Winter Bird' - one I wish she'd allowed to surface a little more - though its final shades, whose auto-tuned layers recall the best of Imogen Heap, pack a punch too. 'Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1)', meanwhile, has been tampered with since its original incarnation - as though it's escaped from her careful grasp, grazed past Mumford & Sons and David Guetta, and then been wrestled back into shape.
There's two levels to 'The Eyes Of A Child', and its shimmering beauty. The poignancy of its sentiment - "I would rather see this world through the eyes of a child" - is rendered somehow more affecting by the fact that Aurora is not yet out of her teens. Her nostalgia has arrived early, and made itself at home - but it's a pure, unjaded sort of nostalgia.
The whole album, in fact, wears its grand themes and melodrama with a lightness that can only have come from someone young and uncynical. It flits and flickers between extravagant highs and lows, but with such earnestness that its sweeping emotions are impossible to resist.
Aurora's is a wide-eyed sort of wisdom, and it's beautiful to behold.
All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend is set for release on 11 March.
See Aurora's forthcoming UK tour dates below. Get tickets and more information here.
Mon October 03 2016 - GLASGOW Art School
Tue October 04 2016 - MANCHESTER O2 RItz
Thu October 06 2016 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE University
Fri October 07 2016 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute 2
Sat October 08 2016 - BRISTOL Trinity
Mon October 10 2016 - BRIGHTON Concorde 2
Tue October 11 2016 - OXFORD O2 Academy Oxford
Thu October 13 2016 - LONDON O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Sat October 15 2016 - CAMBRIDGE Junction
Sun October 16 2016 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
