I do wish I had more time tonight to talk about this fortnight’s album but I have my exercise commitments (and a healthy amount of sleep) to try to stick to, so I shall do my best to make this a study in brevity. Now, maybe not a lot of people have heard of Fever Ray, but it was an alias name created by Swedish singer-songwriter Karin Dreijer in late 2008 during the hiatus of The Knife, a band they formed with their brother Olof. Their self-titled debut album enjoyed a fair amount of success thanks to lead single ‘If I Had a Heart’ being used in several prominent TV shows including Breaking Bad (which I will now have to rewatch to listen out for it!) And this is the album I will quickly cover tonight.
Put simply, Fever Ray’s debut is an airy, yet eerie
trip, deeply percussive, electronic, and tribal, with the ability to somehow
transport you to both past and future. The first track, the aforementioned
single ‘If I Had a Heart’, was where it started for me, yet it wasn’t through a
movie soundtrack but the music video itself, as part of a ‘strangest music videos’
compilation, that I first heard this bizarre song. For the most part it is a
sinister track, composed of repetitive, almost mechanical notes against a bass
drone, and Dreijer’s deep, layered, distorted vocals (and the music video is
equally dark and confusing), but there are brief flashes of light in Dreijer’s
softer vocals and the accompanying atmospheric change in musical tone. And this
tone is repeated in three other songs: ‘Dry and Dusty’, ‘Concrete Walls’, and ‘Stranger
Than Kindness’, all of which I love just as much.
‘Dry and Dusty’ is an eerily celestial sounding
track with soft percussion, drawn out synth notes, and those same distorted
vocals which do occasionally give way to Dreijer’s real lighter voice. ‘Concrete
Walls’, by contrast, retains a persistent, almost unsettling tone, comprising a
low bass drone, rattling, metallic percussion (tambourine and a hollow striking
sound), drawn out synths and much lower vocal distortion. It’s a little tribal,
a lot trippier, and honestly quite desolate, but you feel a little comforted by
the softer synths towards the end. ‘Stranger Than Kindness’ also retains some
of this softness, being an instrumentally faster and lighter track with much
tighter metallic sounds, and even a small dose of electric guitar reverb, finished
with the dull lustre of some piano/string-type synth notes (cannot place what
it was).
By almost stark contrast, you have the free-spirited,
slightly celestial nostalgia of songs like ‘When I Grow Up’ (slightly hollow instrumentation
with Dreijer’s natural vocals), ‘Seven’ (a track which starts out strongly
percussive yet muted, and evolves into something complex and atmospheric,
evoking memories of childhood), and ‘I’m Not Done’ (I can’t even fully encompass
the celestial, instrumental wonder of this track, pierced with yet more layered
and semi-distorted vocals).
You get a few more songs like ‘I’m Not Done’ which
stand out for their instrumental clarity – these being ‘Triangle Walks’, ‘Now’s
The Only Time I Know’, and ‘Coconut’ – though these are quite different from
one another. Where ‘Triangle Walks’ is lightweight, tightly metallic (I love
the dominating notes of what sound like glass bottles of water or metal tubes being
struck) with almost natural vocals, ‘Now’s The Only…’ is light yet gets more
complex as it progresses, especially focused on metallic percussion and
electronic warping, while ‘Coconut’ is more grounded, with earthy electronic
notes, fast percussive strikes, even what sound like bird noises and a hint of
a kalimba alongside the deeper yet still natural vocals.
And that leaves my favourite to last: ‘Keep The
Streets Empty for Me’, a softly tribal, gently electronic, occasionally percussive
piece of forlorn wonder. It too grows in complexity but never gets overwhelming,
instead simmering away with a beautiful set of natural vocals, tribal drumbeats
which sound like raindrops, and some deep, evocative panpipes. It all comes
together to produce a feeling of obscure calm which is slightly trance-like, almost
trippy (though I have no real idea what one feels like), and just a tiny bit disturbing
– just how I like it!
(I do realise I missed the ending track ‘Been Here
Before’ but it wasn’t too much of a stand-out, being simplistic yet bizarre in
its own way. I am also aware of the turn that Fever Ray has taken subjectively
in their follow-up albums, which couldn’t be more different, but unfortunately
it is not to my taste. Maybe one day, when I have more time, I might try it out
again.)
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