I Feel A Fever Ray Coming On…

Karen Dreijer, a.k.a Fever Ray

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.