Auri - "III Candles & Beginnings" : One of the best progressive folk albums of the year

    In troubled times it’s good to have bands who can hold a black mirror up to twisted reality, but there’s also a place for those who offer a haven of temporary relief. Finnish symphonic prog-metal titans Nightwish have always had a flair for the fantastical, and their prog-folk offshoot Auri offer a similar escapist vibe. Their mystical flutterings are perhaps what should be expected from a project taking its name from a fantasy book series (The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss). "Far across the sea/A land of home we weave/ With songs of light we bridge the dark", croons vocalist Johanna Kurkela as they tiptoe in velvet shoes across The Invisible Gossamer Bridge, the opening song on their third album.

The core trio is filled out by Kurkela’s husband and Nightwish mastermind Tuomas Holopainen, along with his English multi-instrumentalist bandmate Troy Donockley. With Nightwish drummer Kai Hahto also lending his percussive talents on a guest musician basis, it would be peculiar if there weren’t points where they at least evoked the parent band. There are certainly hints in the arrangements but there are only a couple of moments — the chugging guitars and slightly darker atmospherics of The Apparition Speaks, the grand symphonic swell that informs the latter half of Shieldmaiden — that could perhaps stow away somewhere in the Nightwish back catalogue.

Instead, Auri are very much their own thing. Kurkela’s crystalline vocals are more delicate than Floor Jansen’s powerhouse delivery, and are perfectly suited to the gentle folk and dreamlike ambient passages that float wistfully through the album. Donockley also takes a prominent role, with his vivid, haunting whistles and uilleann pipes playing as much a part as Holopainen’s keyboards and synths. The latter may be the chief composer in Nightwish, but he takes a more democratic songwriting approach with Auri and the glorious result is a genuinely collaborative soundscape that ebbs and flows beautifully with a wide range of sounds and textures.

Oh, Lovely Oddities lives up to an early self-offered description of the band as music to listen to while falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. Blakey Ridge is an upbeat slice of poppy folk that gives a nod to a remote pub called The Lion Inn on the North York Moors, while Museum Of Childhood gives off wholesome Disney soundtrack vibes with its world music rhythms and nature sounds. There’s a magical feel to the album as a whole and, if the unremitting bleakness of the world outside is getting a little too much, there are worse places than here to hole up and shut it all out.