With The Knife on hiatus after creating the best album of 2006, Karin Dreijer Andersson, clearly unable to contain those creative juices no longer, started to write and create songs without her sibling, and Fever Ray was born. This new solo adventure is a dark pit of introspective leftfield electronica, drenched in creativity and originality, engrossing the listener with every sound.
Similarities with The Knife are unavoidable, but once you look deeper into the album, they become distant and merely superficial. It is still fiercely experimental, cut from the same electronic synth-led cloth, with sparse beats, abstract lyrics and instrumentation adding subtlety, and then there’s that voice; instantly recognisable as the voice on Silent Shout, filtered, layered, and manipulated to convey a whole range of emotion and depth. However, Fever Ray is darker, unsettling, more deliberate and delicate in its melodies, with a personal lyrical base forging a greater emotive connection with the listener.
The throbbing, reverberating hum that starts the album on “If I Had A Heart” is ominous in delivery, yet rich in tone, awakening your nightmares with the warped vocals echoing nihilist undertones, loneliness, and despair. It captivates and compels, and despite its gloomy presence, the haunting melodies are infectious, pulling you into the rest of the album. It is these melodies that really give the album its quality; they burrow down beneath your consciousness, and every aural fibre is spent letting them envelop you. The icy hum of “Dry and Dusty” is absorbed deep within, the minimalist beauty of “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” chills the soul, while “Concrete Walls” is a isolated journey replete with a distorted vocal drone and allegorical lyrics.
With The Knife, the lyrics were either too abstract to make sense of, or too obvious to be given thought, but here Andersson has given them a more individuality to go along with the conceptual element - rewarding the attentive listener with the nuances held within. “Seven” follows interlinking stories all built around that number, “Concrete Walls” is about ups and downs of motherhood (Andersson wrote the album after the birth of her second child), and “I’m Not Done” rebels against the music industry and her own thoughts of retirement; “Who is the Alpha / What is made of cloth / How do you say you're sorry and there's nothing to be afraid of.”
Despite its foreboding atmosphere, the album contains some uplifting moments to alleviate the melancholy and bring some in some welcome variation. The use of varying synth notes, textures and tempos, mixed with organic instrumentation such as guitar and percussion, is a welcome chance of pace, stopping any hint of repetition and adding a warmer contrast. It is in these moments of transition that the musicianship and craft can really be appreciated, as the whole album comes together as one complete work.
For fans of The Knife, Andersson has created a work to match their exceptional canon that, while different, is as richly rewarding and enjoyable. But, this is not simply an album acting as filler before the duo's next album, and especially for those unaware or simply unfussed by the The Knife, it is much more; it is an album of rich melodies, unnerving beauty and elegiac charms, fantastically crafted and unlike anything else you’ll hear in electronic music. As the lyrics in “I’m Not Done” state, “One thing I know for certain / I'm pretty sure / It ain't over / I'm not done,” a sentiment we can all be thankful for.
-James Ould