Live Review: Aurora - Roundhouse, London 11/11/2019

Aurora casts a spell at London’s Roundhouse. 

The crowd is anxious for action, hooting approval and falling back in disappointment at every drumroll of the soundcheck. They push relentlessly to the front trying to get closer to the main stage and it becomes clear to me that if I want a glimpse of the scandi wunderkind I’ll have to fight for it. It’s Monday night and this is distinctly  an  after  work crowd.There’s a bit of glitter here, a splattering of face paint there, and three honest to god elves with pointed ears, but by in large it’s a chinos and cardigans affair. But there’s already a hint of enchantment in the air and when Aurora finally takes the stage she raises her arms and all the work week normality flies from the room.

Coming in with the spectral ‘Churchyard’, Aurora transports the audience into her world of myth, magic and murder. Now twenty-three, she still seems very much the elfen, girl-child she was when she first gained global recognition four years ago. Dressed in a layered gown like a Victorian china doll, she struts around stage with the back of her hand to her forehead,  jumping up and down with unabashed exuberance. After weaving her spell over the audience, Aurora speaks like one just out of a trance, seemingly surprised to find there are people in the room, “Oh, that’s nice, we are so many!”. This is when the show is at its best, when the audience is invited into Aurora’s odd insular world. In her tiny, accented voice she tells the audience that she was once very shy, but how their support has brought her out and it becomes clear the effect goes both ways. During her song ‘Warrior’ the stuff shirted man next to me belts out the entire song with truly shocking abandon.

Aurora leans heavily on self-love and expression, both in her songs and stage banter, and by the middle of her set the positive affirmation anthems are coming thick and fast. Before launching into ‘Queendom’ she calls out “ You  have the right to be who you are” and repeatedly reminds the audience that we aren’t alone and that’s it’s good to cry. She  speaks these sentiments with  unpretentious earnestness, but still it’s not quite as good as her opening  murder ballads and banter about Bristol’s extra shiny pigeons. Aurora is most engaging when she focuses on her own eccentricities rather then the audiences’  generalities. She may want us to be who we are, but really we might all just want to lose ourselves in her.

Aurora stated that she hoped her music could “save the soul of humanity”. In the end, our  souls  might not have been saved, but she  did make this crowd feel  magic for one night and that’s a start. 

Words by Gwendolen Austin and Photography by Ant Adams