A review essay of Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1) and A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) by AURORA. Decca and Glassnote Records, 2018-2019.

Following the release of her successful debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, in 2016, AURORA had more to discover and even more to say. After recording and producing eleven tracks for a new project in January of 2018, AURORA’s second album became much more weighty than anticipated. AURORA wanted to give listeners more time with each track so she split her project into two studio albums. The first half of this project was called Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), released on September 28th, 2018. Described in an interview with NME magazine as “a natural step after [her] first album,” Infections is made up of eight tracks that explore AURORA’s “deeper understanding of [herself]” (Trendell). “It’s more tuned into my soul and who I am,” she states. “It’s about the many, many different aspects of what it is to be human.”

AURORA opens Infections by welcoming you to her queendom. Acting as the lead single for this album, “Queendom” is a celebration and is a way to give a voice to the voiceless. AURORA especially welcomes “the underdogs” (and the outcasts), the “silent ones” (and the black sheep) (Queendom 0:07). What I think makes the opening to Infections so compelling and entrancing is that AURORA claims she will fight for all the underdogs and black sheep because she is one herself:

Drink until you’ve had enough

I’ll drink from your hands

I will be your warrior

I will be your lamb (0:22)

“Forgotten Love” features lyrics which AURORA fans will never understand, as she made up her own language, purely “based on emotion” for this song (@AURORAmusic). Rather than sing along and memorise the lyrics, AURORA wants listeners to feel the music and the energy behind the made-up words. I think she succeeds in her goal here, as the bridge—where AURORA’s made-up language is featured—is one of the most memorable parts of the song. It’s uplifting, and I can better focus on the music and the energy without lyrics that I understand. This song explores the freedom that can come from letting go of a love that has been lost, and I can really feel that when listening to the bridge; it feels freeing and encouraging, like it’s urging its listener to let go and be free from whatever painful thing might be weighing them down.

Following these two singles are “Gentle Earthquakes” and “All is Soft Inside,” both of which are about contrast and extremity. “Gentle Earthquakes”–a contradiction in itself–is a song of opposites, discussing an “ugly” and “flawless” love, which the narrator of the song fell into both gently and intensely (Gentle Earthquakes 1:22). “All is Soft Inside” does something similar to “Gentle Earthquakes,” highlighting a myriad of contradictory emotions and settings: “All around is stone / All is soft inside” (All is Soft Inside 0:48). I believe the focus on extremity and opposites in both these songs isn’t meant to represent division, but diversity—which is the one true constant and is what, AURORA suggests, can bring us all together:

We can save

What is pure

If the hearts can collide

All that I’ve ever known

Is the universe is wild (4:32)

We move to, perhaps, Infections’ most angry and most desperate song. “It Happened Quiet” opens with a harp and AURORA’s soft voice, and describes a quiet death. This song is much like “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)” off of AURORA’s first album, which explains how a man murders his lover “to spare [her] from / The awful things in life […]”(Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1) 1:05); though more abstract, “It Happened Quiet” has the same motifs of slightly unmeaning violence. “Churchyard,” the next song on Infections—and perhaps my favourite out of the eight tracks due to its powerful cello, insistent percussion, and haunting, layered vocals from both AURORA and from Norwegian choir, Oslo Fagottkor—also shares in this idea. “It Happened Quiet” and “Churchyard” are angrier than “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)” and both demonstrate a sort of karma coming for the narrative’s antagonist or killer. The narrator of “It Happened Quiet” tells the song’s antagonist:

Don’t you speak over my voice

I will return from the shadows

And I’ll bleed in your bed

Turn it red

Like the ground outside your window (It Happened Quiet 2:56)

“Soft Universe,” a song that also discusses pain and injustice, follows the idea that the universe and love are both wild. Just as she does in “Gentle Earthquakes” and “All is Soft Inside,” AURORA sees the duality and extremities in everything. “Soft Universe” is acknowledging that both the world and love can be violent and cruel, yet also gentle.

If you’re going to listen to only one song from this album, it should be the titular track. “Infections of a Different Kind”—detailed by AURORA in June of 2018 as “the most important song she has ever written”—explores the concept of divinity: not just in God, but in ourselves (Lat). Having explored all the good and the bad in humanity within the seven previous songs, AURORA seems to be saying that we are infected—that “if there is a God, […] he would shake his head / And turn away” (Infections of a Different Kind 1:10). We need, therefore, an infection of a different kind; we need to be “God in the shape of a girl / Who walks this world,” and we need to be kinder to each other (1:27).

With its simple, but powerful vocals, and its almost ethereal instrumentation, the final track for Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1) demonstrates that this is an album of balance. I found myself greatly considering the extremities I see in the world after listening to Infections, and would recommend that everyone do the same. Infections opens your eyes, invites you to see the anger and the love in the world—the wildness and the softness—and tells you that you must reconcile these traits. It insists that all of humankind’s extremities live together, as this is the only way to keep the world from falling apart and us from being completely infected by hate, cruelty, and violence. We need an infection of a different kind, and we need to ask ourselves, “If I am the world then why would I hurt / All that is living” (2:15)?

Following Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), AURORA released A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) on June 7th, 2019. Composed of eleven tracks (including some which were scrapped from Infections), A Different Kind of Human—as described by AURORA in an interview with Notion Magazine—“[…] has this mix of the ancient and futuristic because we are in a very interesting time now, […] trying to learn how to live with the world, the technology, with us, and trying to balance it all in harmony” (Parkes). The lessons of balance listeners got from Infections are not to be forgotten as AURORA leads them into the world of A Different Kind of Human.

The first lesson AURORA gives within this album is simply, “You can cry” (The River 0:37). The first track on A Different Kind of Human and the album’s third single, “The River,” urges you to let go of all the emotions you have been holding back, and feel what you need to feel. “Don’t forget who you are even though you’re in need” (1:18). It’s an upbeat, encouraging song, and I think it prepares you well for the emotion contained within the rest of A Different Kind of Human.

AURORA quickly moves on to “Animal,” A Different Kind of Human’s leading single. It is a “very ironical song,” as AURORA herself described on her Instagram; “It’s raw because we are raw, it’s sensual because nature is sensual. It’s wrong and strange because the world is wrong and strange. It’s free because we should be free” (@auroramusic). Once again, AURORA makes us see the duality in ourselves, in nature, and in the world. She does much the same in the track following this. “Dance on the Moon” is a slower, dreamier song about imagination. In it, AURORA sings, “I’m an angel, I’m an atom,” recognising the duality in herself, saying she is both celestial and minuscule (Dance on the Moon 2:07).

Following this recognition, we’re moved into “Daydreamer,” the most outwardly critical and opinionated track from both Infections and A Different Kind of Human so far. “Daydreamer” starts lighter, both narratively and instrumentally–with AURORA’s usual ethereal kind of instrumentation and airy voice–before her voice lowers and the drums kick in for the chorus. We need to pay attention:

And we become night-time dreamers

And street walkers, small talkers

When we should be daydreamers

And moonwalkers and dream talkers (Daydreamer 1:05)

I found this point in the album extremely compelling; AURORA is telling us to wake up! Do not just simply walk through life, leaving your dreams only for sleep. Get up and act. Go against the grain and pursue your dreams.

“Hunger” follows suit, outwardly criticising humanity’s tendency toward greed and exploitation, and its hunger and indifference to the people hurt by our consumption. AURORA asks her listeners, “Would you ever feed each other” (Hunger 0:45)? “If I could not open my mouth, then would you talk for me” (1:12)? Would you help the people who cannot help themselves? Will you help give a voice to the voiceless? Or will you keep endlessly consuming?

The next tracks on A Different Kind of Human are “Soulless Creatures” and “In Bottles” (the latter of which is a sequel to “In Boxes,” a song from AURORA’s debut EP, Running with the Wolves). Both “Soulless Creatures” and “In Bottles” have a certain brutality about them. “Soulless Creatures” is told from the perspective of someone being torn apart by someone who appears to have no soul, no conscience, and no remorse. “In Bottles” features a narrator who has done such terrible things that their past actions need to be hidden from their lover (the terrible things they’ve done are detailed in “In Boxes,” which follows this same narrator as they murder people and keep their victims’ body parts in boxes). The people within these songs are infected with hate and with violence.

Here we come to “A Different Kind of Human,” this album’s titular track. I think this is the most important song on the album and the pinnacle of the narrative presented within AURORA’s two-part album. “A Different Kind of Human” sounds much like “Infections of a Different Kind,” with ethereal vocals and a simple production. But there is something otherworldly about this song. AURORA’s voice is almost robotic as she becomes an alien, offering to take the good people of Earth—the people who have infections of a different kind—to their alien mothership and their world, where they can be at peace. They are “different kind[s] of human,” they are too good, too hopeful, for Earth, and so they must leave (A Different Kind of Human 1:23).

At a glance, it would seem that AURORA is contradicting everything Infections and the first seven tracks of A Different Kind of Human seem to be suggesting about living in harmony. She seems to be saying that infected people cannot live with people who have an infection of a different kind… that the wild traits of humanity cannot live with the soft ones. But this is not the case. An alien mothership is not taking the best of us away to live in another world and ignore all the damage we have done to each other and to the earth; that isn’t going to happen. We have to live with one another, and we have to act; sometimes, even the softest of us must be wild.

From here, we move to “Apple Tree” and “The Seed,” the most proactive tracks on A Different Kind of Human. “Apple Tree” is a hopeful, hip-hop-inspired, fast-paced track about how we can all save the world if we work together. AURORA emphasises in the chorus:

Let her save the world

She is just a girl

Let him save them all

He is just a boy (Apple Tree 0:51)

She’s saying, here, that individuals are not insignificant. We may be just single people, but we can make a difference. “Apple Tree” moves into “The Seed,” A Different Kind of Human’s second single and penultimate track—and for good reason! “The Seed’s” verses are slow, quiet, and contemplative. Verse two, for example, has its narrator hope that their suffering is not for nothing, that their “tears can be rain” so they can “water the ground” and “the flowers can grow back again” (The Seed 1:21). The verses, though, build and build into the theatrical, powerful chorus, which features a rage-filled reminder, meant to make us stop and think about our greed and what we can do to fix this world:

You cannot eat money, oh no

When the last tree has fallen

And the rivers are poisoned

You cannot eat money, oh no (0:49)

So… where do we go from here? AURORA suggests that we go home.

“Mothership,” the final track on A Different Kind of Human, is a continuation of “A Different Kind of Human,” and I think it is a perfect way to end AURORA’s two-part project: Infections of a Different Kind of Human. This track shows the people who have been taken by the aliens in “A Different Kind of Human” arriving in their new home, which is better and more peaceful than the Earth they have left behind. Again, AURORA is not suggesting that the best of us hop onto an alien ship and go to live on a different, better planet, but is imagining a world that we have made better ourselves: our old home, our Earth, made anew.

In both Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1) and A Different Kind of Human (Step 2), AURORA challenges us, not only to see the extremities—the wildness and the softness—in humanity, but also in ourselves, and she suggests that making peace with our infections will be our saving grace. Yes, the world is infected with violence, but it’s also infected with gentleness and hope. AURORA is inviting us to reconcile them. By listening to this two-part album, she hopes that you realise that we must live together (in AURORA’s created queendom, and in the real world), and we must act together; this is how we can save the world. You must be infected… and you must become a different kind of human.