So, only 14 years after they first formed, Auri played their first ever international show, and landed up in Manchester to do it, in the austere Theatre of the RNCM, which was actually a perfect choice given its acoustic credentials.

It wasn’t sold out. About 500 of the 650 seats, which surprised me, but I suppose that economic issues together with a 40-quid ticket price tag didn’t help.

I wondered what audience demographic they might attract. Making their way slowly through the vast musical complex and up a challenging flight of stairs to the Theatre doors many looked like MPs strolling to the sound of the division bell in the Commons.

There was the odd Nightwish T-shirt on show (many readers will know that three of the six-member Auri live band are also full time in that seminal group). But the vast majority of folk had the air of ex members of the Peace Corps, or of a reunion of the Woodcraft Folk from the 1960s.

Gentle, peaceful people, a world away from the screaming sirens of the multiple police cars outside, scrambling to the scene of the latest stabbing.

But that is exactly what Auri is all about. There might be an air of mystery about them, the suggestion that they inhabit the same woods where the elves and trolls of Tuomas Holopainen’s Nightwish imagination hang out but at the end of the day what they represent is the good in the world, or at least what is left of it; the diametric opposite of the bad and the ugly that resides over a border just 20 kilometres from their Kitee base in Finland.

Their songs are the stuff of happy dreams; only rarely of nightmares. Melodies to lull yourself to sleep to.

Leading them is Johanna Kurkela, a woman with the grace of a gazelle, the physical looks and slight frame of a Goddess, the voice of an angel and the most dramatic red hair you have ever seen. I’m assured it isn’t a wig but it is so long that it even acts as a bum warmer against the early autumn chill of a September Manchester evening.

But as sweet as that incredible voice is, sat right behind her on keyboards with a permanent beaming smile on her face is another Johanna – Iivanainen – whose voice is even more beautiful.

Of course the two know each other well from their work in the band Altamullan Road so you would expect their harmonies to be good. But they aren’t good.

They are sensational.

The 19-song set was split into two with a convenient toilet break for the older audience members that had spent a little too long at the bar. It contained work from each of their three albums but not so many tracks from the recently released ‘III – Candles and Beginnings.’

Both halves were introduced by the growing sound of the chords from ‘A boy travelling with his mother’, the last track on the new album and an 11-minute masterpiece that is the finest piece of prog I’ve heard since the 1970s.

‘Duty of Dust’ stood out early on, also ‘Aphrodite Rising’, “the first song we ever released” as Troy Donockley shouted out in what was almost the only non-musical verbal communication of the entire evening (see later).

‘Them thar chanterelles’ finished the main set with a mesmerising piece of dancing from Johanna Kurkela while both ‘Shieldmaiden’ and ‘Pearl Diving’ – Auri’s own ‘Ghost Love Score’ – allowed them to let rip with the closest they get to rock.

But the essence of Auri’s magic can’t be measured in individual songs. There is a unifying feel good ambience to their entire performance, even in the tracks that are darker, that I find difficult to attribute to just about other band. They often soar but any band can do that. What matters is the spot that soaring hits and only Auri knows where that is. The G-spot now succumbs to the A-spot.

I knew what to expect. These are musicians at the very peak of their profession and they delivered to order. “Just as I suspected, you’re just what I expected” to paraphrase ‘Pearl Diving’.

I was slightly disappointed there was not a single cover played. I’d hoped they might cover ‘Lanternlight’, which Nightwish is yet to perform live. I am convinced that Johanna Kurkela together with Troy Donockley would have more than done justice to it vocally.

A lady sat next to me asked me to describe it as “perfect” for that was how she saw it. And musically it was.

But the critic in me demands I comment on the fact there was hardly any communication whatsoever. I’m not convinced that a foreign band playing gigs in the UK for the first time ever should be failing not only to communicate something of the meanings of their songs (even allowing for the fact that Auri songs can have multiple implied meanings) or that they shouldn’t make at least an attempt to reach out to the audience.

But at the end of the day you get what you pay for and we got was the unusual sensation of being charmed to death by a form of entertainment that came from another era.

‘Pearl Diving’ from one of their six Finnish gigs in October:

This review is a synopsis of one that first appeared in Nordic Music Central – the dedicated go-to site for artists and bands from the burgeoning Nordic music scene. www.nordicmusiccentral.com

Related