Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of The Knife has released her debut solo LP “Fever Ray” and boy is it a corker!
Fever Ray is the title, of both project and album, an evocation of the music’s sound, intense and anxious, yet luminous. It’s the culmination of work that began in 2007 when Karin and Olof, the brother-sister duo who are The Knife, decided to take time out following a handful of incredible live shows. Their first two albums did well in their Swedish homeland; their third, Silent Shout, went to Number One, won six Swedish Grammys, underlined their reputation as an act capable of the truly extraordinary and was pronounced the best record of 2006 by Pitchfork.
After having her second child and eight months of the most productive daydreaming later, Karin had a batch of new songs and the raw materials for the production of Fever Ray. Unsure how to get them over the finishing line, she took half to Christoffer Berg (who mixed The Knife’s work), half of Stockholm production duo Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid for a final brush and tickle. The result is Fever Ray, an album that, while recognizably the work of the same artist, is dramatically different from The Knife.
Constantly inventive, restlessly emotive, Fever Ray swaggers, broods, intrigues and dazzles without ever making concessions to the soap opera demands of modern media. ‘I think the music should be able to stand for itself without interfering, like what the artist looks like. That’s something you find out during the process, it’s a steady ongoing process about how you survive. When you work with music, you have the possibility to create magic.’
By now you may have heard the meandering and moody pulses of duel album openers “If I Had A Heart” and “When I Grow Up” or better still watched their cinematic visual accompaniments. They’re as good a sampling as any for the creeping sense of dread Karin concocts on the rest of the album and represent a departure from the off-kilter dance jams that popularized The Knife’s third studio LP “Silent Shout”. Though fans of The Knife will find familiar stylistic elements resurfacing in Fever Ray – skittering beats, electronic textures and of course that voice Karin has traded the kinetic bounce and weave for minimalistic almost somber odes to nature, love and growing up. Comparison’s between the two are inevitable but in Fever Ray’s self-assured debut the distance between cerebral instrumentation and pathos inducing subject matter is closer, more human, and ultimately more significant.
Fever Ray’s debut single If I Had A Heart is available now on iTunes. The debut self-titled album was released on March 21st 2009 on etcetc, through Universal Music Australia.
Tracklisting is as follows:
1. If I Had A Heart
2. When I Grow Up
3. Dry And Dusty
4. Seven
5. Triangle Walks
6. Concrete Walls
7. Now’s The Only Time I Know
8. I’m Not Done
9. Keep The Streets Empty For Me
10. Coconut
