I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: June 2, 2022] Aurora

This is my fourth time seeing Aurora.  When I saw her in 2018, she was barely known here and I thought she might never play the States again.  Well, three tours later, she has sold out one of the larger venues in Philadelphia.  Good for her, but not so great for us.

The place was packed and we arrived late enough that we were stuck way in the back.  And Aurora has a fan base that is quite…intense.  So there was lots of shrieking and such.  There was also a lot of talking off to the side–drunken idiots who needed to talk loudly despite everyone shushing them (but they also knew all the words so they were fans, wtf).

So I was annoyed when the show started, which is a shame because the show itself was pretty amazing.

She had really upped her production since the last tour, with big screens of dancers behind her.  My wife was really excited to go for some fun poppy dancing.  I joked that it was going to be an all acoustic mellow show.

And I’m surprised to say that my joke almost came true, kind of.

The show opened with the gothy, spooky Churchyard

It was followed by the pretty, but very quiet “Soulless Creatures.”  Aurora has always had an amazing voice but it has improved with each tour and she sounded truly incredible on some of these songs.  For this tor she had two backing singers.  Previously, she had Silja Sol Dyngeland (who has an azming voice, too) as her main backing vocalist.  But she has been replaced by Amalie Holt Kleive and Thea Wang.  Both of them were off  to the side and hard to see, but their voices were just amazing.

Aurora told us that she remembered writing Through the Eyes of a Child when she was a child–about the feeling of losing that special way that children have of seeing the world.  It’s a lovely song but I really don’t like hearing it live–it’s long and slow and was kind of weird to hear it right in the beginning like this.  At this point the momentum was totally gone.  And she accidentally said the song would be Warrior, which is one that my wife and I love and would have been so psyched to hear!

It picked up a bit with the lovely “The River”

Next up was A Soul with No King and her guitarist Fredrik Svabø played an amazing mandolin. On the record this song is kind of dancey but the live version was pretty quiet, with just the mandolin propelling it for a bit.

The song picks up and starts rocking and it seemed like the dancing would come, but she jumped back to the quieter All is Soft Inside with some great vocals, but which is hardly dance material.

I didn’t realize that she has played Runaway every time I’ve seen her.  I do like this song with its great melody.  But again, not a banger and frankly there are some other great songs from the debut to include (Running with the Wolves/Warrior).

Then she slowed things down even more, with a gorgeous version of Exist for Love (which would have been amazing if it had been in between dancier songs) and an incredibly slow version of “Murder Song,”  and uncomfortable song to begin with (what with her being killed) and musically it’s usually upbeat but she really stripped it bare.

I wasn’t bored by any of this, because everyone sounded great. But being so far back and not being able to see much of anything and then having the songs be all quiet and intimate didn’t quite do it for me.  And when I listen to her albums, I love all of these songs, but I guess I didn’t want to hear them this way live.

Up next was Heathens which starts slow but does build up to a dance with some great drums from Sigmund Vestrheim.  And after a brief taped interlude (the opening song from The Gods We Can Touch) the show really took off.

The Dark Dresses Lightly is a cool weird dark song with great backing vocals, thumping drums and a wild chorus.  The end of the song features Aurora sing/shouting Oh No Oh No Oh No!  Which gave me goosebumps live.  It was followed by The Seed, a really dark song that is totally danceable.  It was followed by the new song Starvation, and outright banger with a massive EDM dance section at the end and the whole room took to dancing for it.

She ended the set with one of my favorite of her songs, Giving In to the Love, a chorus that is magical.

Aurora tends to talk a lot between songs and she did in the beginning, making some nice points about how we can get through anything even after the recent election. I often find her asides charming but my joints were hurting and I was getting a bit fatigued by this point (I really count on being closer to the front and being really absorbed in the show I guess).

For the encore, she came out and played the infectious Cure for Me and we were psyched to have such a great dance song.  She followed it with one of faves off the new album, Some Type of Skin, which has more great vocals from all three women.  It was a highlight of the night for me.

Then before the final song (and this show lasted 2 hours! very impressive) she thanked everyone.  And she ended the night with a beautiful slow ballad Invisible Wounds.  Again, just not what we were in the mood for.  My wife had a coughing fit and ran out of the room (good thing we were near the back) and I did what I never do, I left before the band left the stage to try to get away from the bottleneck that always crowds the exit.

So, yes, the concert was impeccable on the stage, but it really didn’t do all that much for me.  There were a lot of songs I would have loved to hear and I wanted the mood to be more up.

It also appears that she has outgrown me–I can’t imagine seeing her live again because the crowds have just gotten too big for me.

Which is even more of a shame since her voice sounds so so good.

 

Fillmore 2024	Union Transfer 2022	Union Transfer 2019	Bowery Ballroom 2018
Goddess of Dusk [tape]	The Forbidden Fruits of Eden [tape] ⇑	Churchyard ⊗	Nature Boy ∀
Churchyard ⊗ [2]	Heathens ⇑	Warrior ∀ [2]	Warrior ∀
Soulless Creatures ⊄	Runaway ∀ [3]	Gentle Earthquakes ⊗	Gentle Earthquakes ⊗
Through the Eyes of a Child ∀ [3]	Everything Matters ⇑	All Is Soft Inside ⊗	Under Stars *
The River ⊄ [2]	Blood in the Wine ⇑	Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) ∀ [2]	Forgotten Love ⊗
A Soul with No King ¿	Warrior ∀ [3]	Runaway ∀ [2]	Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) ∀
All Is Soft Inside ⊗ [3]	A Temporary High ⇑	The Seed ⊄ [2]	Runaway ∀
Runaway ∀ [4]	A Dangerous Thing ⇑	It Happened Quiet ⊗	Soft Universe ⊗
Exist for Love ⇑ [2]	Exist for Love ⇑	Animal ⊄ [2]	Queendom ⊗
Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) ∀ [3]	Infections of a Different Kind ⊗ [2]	Forgotten Love ⊗ [2]	All is Soft Inside ⊗
Heathens ⇑ [2]	The River ⊄	I Went Too Far ∀ [2]	Animal ⊄
The Forbidden Fruits of Eden [tape] ⇑	Cure for Me ⇑	Running with the Wolves ∀ [2]	I Went Too Far ∀
The Dark Dresses Lightly ¿	Queendom ⊗ [3]	encore	The Seed ⊄
The Seed ⊄[3]	The Seed ⊄ [3]	Infections of a Different Kind ⊗	Running with the Wolves ∀
Starvation ¿	Running with the Wolves ∀ [3]	Queendom ⊗	encore
Giving In To the Love ⇑ [2]	encore		Through the Eyes of a Child ∀
encore	Through the Eyes of a Child ∀ [2]
Cure for Me ⇑ [2]	Giving In To the Love ⇑
Some Type of Skin ¿	A Little Place Called the Moon [tape] ⇑
Invisible Wounds ¿

 

¿ What Happened to the Heart? (2024)
⇑ The Gods We Can Touch (2022)
⊄ A Different Kind of Human: Step 2 (2019)
⊗ Infections of a Different Kind Step 1 EP (2018)
∀ All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend (2016)
* single (2014)