Well, it’s here at last, folks: Aurora’s A Different Kind Of Human - Step 2. And clearly Ms. Aksnes and her collaborator Magnus Skylstad are in the mood to party.
This is an up album: Aurora’s bid for your heart and wiggling bum. Even lyrically-deep songs like ‘Daydreamer’ - about reading books in city lights - go all dance-mode when Aurora sings that chorus about night time dreamers and moon walkers. Cocteau-Twins-cool video for ‘The River’ where branches and budding leaves grow out of our artist’s eyes has been floating around on YouTube for weeks now and turning nearly two million viewers onto her make-me-smile beats.
Echoed vocal gymnastics of ‘In Bottles’ and the unsettling childlike rhythms of ‘Apple Tree’ mirror two of our favourite Billies (Marten, Eilish.) “We cannot eat money,” the Indian proverb tells us, and in one of the album’s real winners ‘The Seed’, Aurora wants to hammer it home. She evangelises on the short-sighted stupidity of corporate greed and what havoc they will wreak on the only planet we have. It’s an impressive barrage of sound - layer after building layer of vocals – her music making palatable the message that we’re flying too close to the sun.
‘Soulless Children’ is a little busy, and possibly even a little too smarty-pants for its own good. But the sleeping-in-your-arms then I-can’t-wait-to-get-away of ‘Hunger’ has David Sylvian moments at its best, while ‘Dance On The Moon’ is one of the album’s loveliest moments, floating breezily between melody and Bjork bop. The album ends on the trippy musical space of ‘Mothership’ – “am I home?”
Like the Northern Lights, Aurora’s new album is a gorgeous, multi-coloured display. While not an outright masterpiece, A Different Kind Of Human - Step 2 proves that Aurora Aksnes is certainly getting close.
A Different Kind Of Human - Step 2 is out now via Decca.
