Fever Ray is the new solo project of Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife. The self titled album maintains her unmistakable voice, electronic experimentation and almost deliberate inaccessibility that listeners of The Knife will be aware of. Unlike her previous band, however, the electro-pop has been replaced with ambient electronica featuring simple sounds layered to create depth and distance without centering them around a dominant ear-catching riff.
Comparisons aside, it seems apt that this is a solo project as listening should be a truly solitary experience. In order to appreciate this album fully you’ll need to pull on a good pair of headphones and lie back in an empty (ideally dark) room. Close your eyes, press play and relax. You’re listening to a broken self help tape, the strings from album opener ‘If I Had A Heart’ rise out of the silence and hover just above ground level giving you a constant to focus on but there’s something unnerving about them. Chanting drifts in and whilst it feels like it’s supposed to help clear the mind, there’s a touch of slick malevolence to it. The whale song, pan pipes and pattering percussion help to abate the sense of pervading dread until Karin begins resonating in her utterly otherworldly voice. Pitched up and down at the same time, she isn’t whispering the expected platitudes of ‘you’re a confident woman’ or ‘you’re making a valid contribution’ but that you shouldn’t be giving up smoking and you definitely don’t deserve that promotion. It feels like hypnotism and if you open one eye you can see Karin swinging her watch back and forth in time to the metronomic striking of chimes and beating of skins.
In one sense Fever Ray is all encompassing. Let your mind wander freely and the shrieking eagles and howling wolves will transport you to a desolate sandy plain bounded only on the horizon by a vast starlit sky. Pressing forward in this isolation is a daunting and pointless task as a glance behind will tell you that your footsteps have disappeared in the wind. You’re alone, forever.
On the other hand, if you take this album to work or listen to it on the bus it proves almost impossible to concentrate on. The smallest of stimuli will draw your attention away and several minutes can pass without your brain having registered hearing anything.
The explanation for this lies in the subtlety with which these songs are put together. Sparse notation filled out with echoes and drones tip toe around smooth glassy strings and Karin’s multilayered vocals. It's an ambitious song writing style; wrapping up swathes of simple noise into a thick sonic fibre making it hard to pick out individual sounds or even tracks. It means the album passes by in one fluid motion without anything demanding particular attention. As such the singles sound underwhelming on their own and aren’t an accurate benchmark for the full length. In fact, Fever Ray is incredibly re-playable as the whole thing becomes a listening experience rather than a combination of identifiable intros, riffs or bridges between riffs.
It’s not often that an album comes out that is as simultaneously captivating and uneventful as Fever Ray’s debut. Even though forty eight minutes of eerie day dreams might seem unproductive you’d be hard pushed to regret it and even harder pushed not to repeat it.
Fever Ray - Triangle Walks
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