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Rating: Before knowing that Aurora was Norwegian, I had already guessed her Scandinavian origins just from her music, from the choice of delicate yet complex arrangements that convey a warm chill, or a burning cold, the kind that burns your hands in winter. Yes, come on, allow me to use the most clichéd oxymorons possible, it's always been my dream!
After a brief intro, you're greeted by a soft advance of gentle piano notes where Aurora's angelic voice lays, making us live what she describes in the first lines of the album:
“I'm driving your car with you sleeping in the seat next to me
Like a baby, you twist and you turn
You're travelling fast like a bird in a dream”
So far, I also feel cradled like when traveling in the passenger seat of a car. But in this “Everything Matters” we are in the back seats, because in the front, besides Aurora driving, we are accompanied by Pomme, another very interesting French singer-songwriter.
It's immediately clear that this is a quality work, where even in a piece so devilishly pop like “Cure For Me,” Aurora shows all her musical intelligence and makes us understand why this album can't simply be defined as pop, but requires a small yet heavy “art” before it. A track that takes a catchy melody and recycles it so well within itself that it never becomes heavy. And it is here that I find myself defining Aurora as a sort of anti-Billie Eilish. Don't ask me why, but it was one of the first thoughts that flashed through my mind the first few times I listened to her, even though points of convergence between the two can be found, indeed, perhaps precisely in light of this.
Up to track 5, every piece seems like a potential Eurovision Song Contest winner, a happy one, straight from the nordic productions of Europe, at 6, a slow, syrupy ballad makes its way, supported by an acoustic arpeggio and strings. In the central part, you realize you're in front of a heterogeneous album, where you hear the distant echo of Björk, as in “Exhale Inhale,” while the album, but also we, as suggested by her, take a deep breath.
Continuing with the listening, I can't help but dream of being in Norway, outdoors, watching the northern lights, also because I realize it would have been a crime not to mention the aurora borealis in an Aurora album that tastes so much of the north, if ever "tasting of the north" were truly a tangible sensation, but I imagine that culturally it can be said, because those places are indeed another world compared to ours, and inevitably that culture influences the music. As Iceland does, to have a reference. “This Could Be A Dream” captures the idea well where the incipit describes what I feel while listening to the record:
“Look up at the light
This could be a dream or it could be real
Dive in to my mind
And don't come up for air, you won't need it here”
You really dive into her mind for the entire length of the album, which is quite long; however, the dynamic is so skillfully balanced, both within the songs themselves and in the choice of their arrangement in the album, that it keeps it constantly moving, an incessant descent and ascent, between synths and sophisticated orchestrations, between ballads and more deliberately energetic tracks, and in the end, you realize you've had, all in all, a nice walk during a light snowfall.
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