This is possibly Auri’s last single before their third album, ‘III – Candles & Beginnings’, drops in mid August in advance of their first ever tour and there’s so much to unpack here it’s difficult to know just where to start.
Tuomas Holopainen, even if he is merely one of three writers with Auri, along with his wife Johanna Kurkela and Troy Donockley rather than the mainly solo composer that he is for Nightwish, has long revealed an interest in childlike things. Odd examples immediately sprung to mind when I saw the title of this single/track, ‘Museum of Childhood’ such as ‘Eva’ (strength and support in the face of bullying), ‘Children of ‘Ata’ (survival against all odds by unrelenting comradeship) and a complete album, ‘Century Child’, which dealt with the loss of innocence. I’m sure there are more on both Auri and Nightwish albums.
The song is an exhortation to enjoy life while you are still young because it lasts no more than a fleeting moment in the overall scheme of things.
It takes us from birth (“First light of day welcoming you to Adventureland”) with the “keys to the Kingdom of the Skies still in your hand” to the fears which come with the onset of awareness of one’s surroundings, negative and harmful influences, to the wonder of the teenage years, dancing barefoot in the grass, “Hearts still raw, young and free”.
Above all, the message is always to dream big, no matter what adversity is placed in your path, and to resist self pity when you succumb to that adversity.
It could be Desiderata 2.0.
And as if often the case it is enlivened by classical references, for example to Egeria, a goddess of birth but who created her own original sin by ‘stealing the power of the sea’ and to Terabithia – representing the power of imagination and the ability to create a world of one’s own, free from the constraints of reality.
I sometimes wonder if that would be Tuomas’ own Nirvana – a place where all the bad in the world would simply disappear down a rabbit hole. He is idealism personified, a sort of latter day Dr Pangloss in Voltaire’s ‘Candide’, for whom all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds and I’d love to have a conversation with him one day about how he reconciles reality with his admirable aspirations.
For example is he (they) aware of what MPs in the UK just did, cheering as loudly as they could – voting to permit abortion right up to the moment of birth so that instead of “first light of day welcoming you” it could be a case of “hello – goodbye” and fleeting seconds of consciousness exterminated?
But such things are for another time.
Let’s turn to the music. As ever it is quite sumptuous. Auri have become the masters of the long, slow build up to overwhelming anthemic outros. This one extends, evolves and intensifies as if a child is being introduced to its time on Earth by way of an induction through the museum as to what it can hope to experience if all goes according to plan even if that rarely happens in practice.
There is much going on from a plethora of instrumentation but what caught my attention was a simple four note arpeggiated (I think – I’m not a muso) piano riff that comes in at around 3:25 and which you will not be able easily to get out of your mind.
The entire production, including the video, has the same sort of power as Nightwish’s ‘Ad Astra’ and that is about as complementary as it is possible to be.
Auri begin their European tour in Finland on 14th August and have three dates in the UK in September (Manchester, Edinburgh and London).
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AURlband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auri.band/
