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.