Heave Media

Fever Ray expands upon the success of The Knife to find something uniquely hers.

A complex, difficult, and very rewarding album for those willing to listen.

Fever Ray

Fever Ray

Released on Mar 24, 2009

Karin Dreijer Andersson has almost made a career for herself distorting her vocals into something not entirely human. Her time as half of the duo, The Knife, gave her a space to begin experimenting with various vocal effects, transforming her voice into masculine and demonic guises. If your a fan of The Knife, then you’ll find Fever Ray to be a more down-tempo yet as deep, engaging, and nuanced as anything Dreijer has done with The Knife.  

Before the good, lets talk bad. This is a very slow album. There are no immediate-gratification tracks on this album and most of these songs don’t really break into their flow until at least a minute or two into it. Folks, this definitely isn’t party music. The album has a very meditative quality to it and requires, no demands, repeated listens to really garner how each piece fits together. Although you’ll be pleased to know that, much like the output of The Knife, each track here is trimmed of all fat. Each track has a set of specific sounds that if removed could potentially destroy the track. Much of the enjoyment you’ll get out of this album is seeing how these sounds fluctuate and morph throughout the album affecting the individual compositions. 

I’ve brought the argument before that electronic music has traditionally been absent of any sort of emotional connection. What Fever Ray proves here is that electronic music can be an amazing conduit for emotion to run through. Synths echo and fade, deep, cavernous bass runs in the background, and a myriad of mood-setting effects and instrumentation bring a sense of tension to the songs here. This is nothing new if you’ve listened to The Knife, but here we see Dreijer turning in such a personal and intimate performance that really distinguishes Fever Ray from The Knife. 

Dreijer’s voice as always, and I’ll repeat this again because it makes me oh-so-happy, is simply fantastic. Whether she uses vocal effects or not, each distinct ‘voice’ treatment is simply evocative in their own right. This comes across most effectively in opener “If I had a Heart” when a deep-voiced Dreijer repeatedly proclaims “give me more, give me more, give me more.” The delivery isn’t forceful or irate, but almost calm and manipulative giving those lines an almost hypnotic quality. Until her ‘natural’ voice (or what we assume is her natural voice) cuts through the sound was I able to break out of it. These inner dialogues make the album feel so personal and intimate - injecting a sense of pathos that was only hinted at on The Knife albums.  

Other album highlights include ‘When I Grow Up’ which flows a synth bass rhythm around an offbeat that slowly comes to the forefront of the song (and in case you haven’t yet, you should check out the music video for it as well - it’s fantastic). ‘When I Grow Up’ is particularly interesting as it is one of the few songs on the album that Dreijer keeps her vocals relatively untouched. ‘Seven’ features Dreijer’s ‘natural’ voice but the delivery conjures a sense of childlike innocence despite the lyrical content being anything but that.  ‘Now’s the Only Time I Know’ gives traditional percussion instruments a melodic quality with a variety of echo and delay effects until the main drum beat enters the song giving structure to all the beautiful noise. 

On Fever Ray, we don’t see Dreijer taking anything The Knife did to the ‘next’ level so to speak. Instead she takes those sonic textures and gives the songs time to become bedroom epics - songs that unfold and reveal themselves to the listener upon each successive repeat and that’s really what’s key here. The murky bass, the tense atmosphere, and Dreijer’s wail can keep listener’s at bay who are unwilling to take the plunge. Those willing to dive into the abyss will find so much to extract from such a focused, creative, and ultimately thrilling artist.

Posted by Danny Lopez on Mar 26, 2009 @ 6:00 am