Fever Ray – Fever Ray

It must be fun being Karin Dreijer Andersson. If virtually any artist I can think of (apart from Björk; Björk can do anything) decided to sing about a friend they’ve had since they were seven and who they have conversations on the phone about dishwasher tablets with, it would probably come across as a sad attempt at being weird, quirky and avant-garde. But not our Karin. As one half of Swedish electronica ensemble The Knife, weirdness is de rigueur for her. In fact, the absence of weirdness would probably cause some kind of mass revolt among her loyal fans (myself included).

It should come as a relief, then, that for her debut solo release under the Fever Ray moniker Karin has remained true to weird, bread-and-butter The Knife material. Though now a happy mother of two young children, Fever Ray sees Karin make a welcome return to the bleak synth landscapes and relentless vocal effects that first brought her and her brother Olof to international stardom.

To be honest, the majority of Fever Ray‘s tracks really don’t steer too clear of waters sailed by The Knife. The vocoder is still omnipresent, used for the vocal masculating effect that has become practically a staple of their sound. This can get tedious after a while, especially if you’ve already had Silent Shout on repeat for the last three years; it’s almost a relief listening to vocoder-free When I Grow Up and Now’s The Only Time I Know, for which Karin has allowed her incredibly unique, almost hauntingly harsh voice to reign free.

Across the album, extensive use has been made of instruments such as vibraphones and malletophones, or synthetic imitations of them. Many of the true synth instruments also have that same sharp-attack timbre, giving the overall impression of an aural assault from an army of musical drums.

A few tracks are refreshing for their surprising originality. Now’s The Only Time I Know veers into pop-like terrain in its form and melody, while Triangle Walks bizarrely might make you feel like you’re wearing an Armani power suit and eating a sushi lunch in an ‘80s L.A. restaurant. Don’t ask.

Stand-out tracks aside, what Fever Ray lacks as a whole is a general unifying structure. The concept of putting this on from start to finish is difficult to imagine; the songs aren’t really that distinctive when compared to each other and they all seem to involve variations of the same instruments and compositional flairs. I kept waiting for something drastic along the lines of We Share Our Mother’s Health to appear and make me go ‘Yesssss!’ but it just doesn’t happen. Everything seems to sound the same; even the aforementioned stand-out tracks don’t really stand out that much.

With that aside, there’s still plenty to appreciate in this album, even if this is your first foray into the Dreijer family music catalogue. However, despite the clear quality of the material, Fever Ray fails to explore territory that wasn’t already traversed by Karin’s work with her brother. Whether this will hold interest over time like Deep Cuts and Silent Shout have remains to be seen.

I Feel A Fever Ray Coming On…

It’s been almost three years since The Knife graced us with their most recent album Silent Shout, and dedicated fans have been growing impatient as the band continues their hiatus. An upcoming opera will no doubt appease the more obsessive fans (of which, when it comes to The Knife, there are many), but while Olof Dreijer is busy recording in the Amazon, big sis Karen has taken it upon herself to unleash some solo material on the world.

Thus, I present to you – Fever Ray! Some of you will already be familiar with the first single, If I Had A Heart, produced by Karen with Christoffer Berg and released digitally just over a month ago. The Andreas Nillson-directed video floated onto the interwebs earlier this month, and is a suitably spooky accompaniment to the song’s relentless bassy synth loop and sombre vintage organ.

The self-titled debut album was released on Klicktrack on January 12th, in delicious, high-quality 320kbps mp3 format. The website gives you the extremely thoughtful ability to preview every track on the album; not just 30 seconds, mind, but the entire length. The physical LP is released across Europe and the U.S. at the end of March.

It doesn’t take a musicological expert to work out that this is one-half of The Knife. Their typical synth techniques crop up time and time again; putting the same synth instrument in fifths, for example, as heard on the bell sounds near the beginning of Triangle Walks and in countless other places on the album. There is also a liberal use of vocoders on Karen’s voice, another textbook The Knife sound.

At the same time, this definitely isn’t another Olof-and-Karen affair. Tracks like Now’s The Only Time I Know and I’m Not Done contain a sound that would have been out of place on Silent Shout. Fresher drums, more energy and – dare I say it? – happier chords. The Knife fans will still love this, but. much like Thom Yorke and The Eraser, Karen’s choice to (for now) branch out on her own has clearly granted her the freedom to explore a new, more versatile sound.