AURORA – The Gods We Can Touch Review

Mood for a piece of music can often be found in a music video. They stick around as cultural landmarks for what an artist hopes to achieve with their work. That art has been somewhat lost now that streaming is the way forward rather than MTV Music, but the craft and care put into AURORA’s album, The Gods We Can Touch is as impressive as it is long-lasting. Beyond those exceptional music videos is a branch of synth-pop that plays around with the fun of the form as often as possible. Atmospheric pop is on the downturn in the wake of TikTok-ready pieces. Aurora provides one track for the social media literates, but doesn’t make it her identity. 

Instead, the Norwegian singer relies entirely on the fascinatingly lucid vocal range she holds. There are smatterings of folk and Europop drum machines on Everything Matters and they are generously layered under the Pomme-featuring track. Giving In To The Love provides a rejection of purity quite unlike anything else heard in pop music, and almost all of that is dependent on the qualities AURORA provides as a lyricist and vocalist. Very dreamy and upbeat in the best way imaginable. Cure For Me is the clear highlight, not just for its catchy riffs and chorus but for how it marks the experimental form so often relied on within The Gods We Can Touch. AURORA’s confidence throughout marks a real, satisfying consistency throughout.  

Other high points are the tender acoustics and slowing of the pace on Exist for Love which boasts surrealism and simplicity in the desire for leaning out for love. It is an ultimately positive song that provides a calmer tone that carries through the rest of the piece. The Innocent has creativity oozing from its mixing and it is very, very easy to get lost in that. AURORA experiences something of tonal whiplash from time to time. Building up a frenetic tension on that track, it is sudden to see it pushed right back down with the slower start and humming of Exhale Inhale, which feels more instructional than anything after the intensity of The Innocent. A Temporary High provides a permanent synthpop riff, more obvious than the rest of the tracks, but certainly as fun.  

A head above the rest in the pop genre, AURORA explores the lush rhythms of that folk and synth-pop blur. There is little flow in the sense of an album as a project, but there is enough variety to stop any fatigue from setting in. All good pop can be compared to that of the defining torchbearer, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. Few mainstream pop albums come close to that quality, and even fewer will progress past it. AURORA steamrolls on through with a touching, well-versed set of tracks that have such a visual sincerity exploding from the words that it is hard to dislike what she hopes to achieve with her work. Anthemic pieces mixed with the acoustic calm that is so desperately needed to give any great performer depth. The Gods We Can Touch is certainly up there.