18 Feb 09
Fever Ray
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Fever Ray
[March 18, 2009] | [Rabid Records]
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6.5/10
The Knife’s 2006 Silent Shout was a powerful composition of eerie electronic music characterized by Karin Dreijer Andersson’s unique voice. The peculiar and striking qualities of Silent Shout put it on the top of 2006 lists, and gave the brother-sister duo yet another affirmation in their ability to top the charts since their 3x platinum self-titled debut and 2003’s Deep Cuts. Dreijer Andersson has since moved onto her own project, Fever Ray, in which she tries to justify a similiar, but more personal approach to Silent Shout with a male counterpart who may or may not be her brother Olof.
Fever Ray opens with the dreary “If I Had A Heart”, and is our first introduction to the deepened, droned, male voice, singing “This will never end / cause I want more”. If we had any reason to believe (we do) that Fever Ray personifies Dreijer, then Dreijer’s work embodies an honest drive towards money, but buried within is a move towards something greater. It is not money that she is after, but these idolized illusory worlds she creates that either are dream land, past memories recreated, or a newly imagined future. What they all share in common are the essences of a search - a search Dreijer reluctantly relates and falls back to reality when she sings “Work as I’ve been told / In return I get money”. The writing behind Fever Ray is thought driven, fragmented, with the nuances of daily living amplified to a seemingly greater importance. It can be seen as lazy, thoughtful, elaborate, but ultimately open for a wide array of interpretations.
The music however, albeit appropriately, can be monotonous and uneventful. The album gives a dry feeling, and the male voice is overly droned out with scarce personality to capture a listener. “Concrete Walls”, for example, has very little alteration between the beat and singing that the act becomes repetive and one noted. Such is the case of Fever Ray in which the album’s songs bleed into one creating a singular mix characterized by eerie, convalescent singing and steady electronic drums until bursts of life from Dreijer call out to us with longing, questioning, and possible torment. These bursts of life can be powerful hooks. Take the lonely atmospheric “Keep the Streets Empty For Me” for example, which uses a dry musical landscape to springboard Dreijer’s voice prominently upwards revealing a lonesome disposition surrounded by thorns of discontent, self-doubt, and wonder.
Although Fever Ray is able to accomplish such feats in “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” and “Dry And Dusty”, the rest of the album drags through prickly brush with no hooks to pull a listener along. There is little to no jumping from beat to beat, and once Fever Ray has found itself comfortable within an acceptable sound - it stays there. Being as such, the introspective debut leaves little replay value, but still remains respectable to stand on its own two legs confident in its symbolism, similes, and personal outreaching for an intrigued listener to dissect its parts.
-Mark
