One, two, three – and you’re flooring me…(again!)

Review by Diana Oakes 

Now, those who know me will be fully aware that it’s very rare that I’m not completely, madly in love with a KEiiNO song (there’s maybe a maximum of three). But there are a few that absolutely pull the rug from under my feet, and take me by complete surprise. 

I feel deeply – too deeply for this modern world, some say – and some KEiiNO songs, like a cat burglar, sneak up on me and shake the bejesus out of me. ‘Nights of thunder’ is one of them. 

I have had it on repeat for days now. Picking up again a nostalgic thread, like in ‘Summer of my life’, there are echoes of melancholy and longing here, too, but this time the sadness is more palpable, in the tempo, in the lyrics, in the tonality of the voices… No more hiding it this time behind an up-tempo beat.   

It’s uncomfortably beautiful and painful at the same time. As I wrote to Alex, the band’s lyricist, “How do you do it? How do you touch those feelings inside me that no other human being should, by rights, even know I have? Are you a soul hacker, Mr Olsson?? 😉” 

Joke aside, the song came at a difficult time and the lyrics hit me like a proverbial hammer and I was emotional for quite a while – I was listening to it on a loop in the kitchen while cooking and I realized I was crying. And not from the onion, trust me! 

The music was also doing a good job of helping the lyrics break down my dams – hauntingly beautiful, it slowly sneaked up on me, enveloped me and drowned me, like a deadly lover, seducing me with beauty, bringing me to my knees before plunging the dagger.  And the few bars of joik were the masterstroke… One, two, three, you’re done flooring me. KEiiNO 1 – Diana 0.  

It’s been a long time – certainly in KEiiNO terms, not since ‘A Winter’s Night’ or ‘Monument’ – have I felt so deeply mirrored in a song, with nowhere to hide, forced to look in the mirror it held in front of me, completely guileless and my soul naked. It sure “showed me memories / from a lost world”, from a lost me, and made me long for a ‘melody / that can set me free / like a flame’ that could ‘ignite’ my history, revive me somehow. 

I also added this song to my Spotify playlist “The Soundtrack to my novel – ‘The Light of Kautokeino’” because it inspires me greatly for a certain scene… 

I absolutely love this song, and it quickly found its place into my Top 5 KEiiNO songs, or maybe even into the Top 3! Back on repeat it goes…