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Fever Ray is the pseudonym of Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson, one half of sibling electronica duo The Knife. Fever Ray is her first solo album while the Swedish pair take a break. It's filled with the same brooding, uncomfortable songs, delivered in swathes of sequencers and impenetrable lyrical concerns. And for fans of such Scandinavian weirdness, it's bloody marvellous.
Playing with identity has long been a modus operandi for The Knife, refusing to appear without masks etc. Fever Ray continues this game while adding a layer of childish fantasy. On first single When I Grow Up she sings ''I want to be a forester, run through the moss on high heels''. It sounds cute, until you see the accompanying video of Dreijer Andersson as a dishevelled and soiled waif intruding into a suburban swimming pool.
While Fever Ray's material owes an obvious debt to that other Northern child of nature, Bjork, particularly in the strangely innocent way she delivers her oblique lyrics of introspection and menace, she's very much her own woman. She brings to the album the same use of reverb-drenched keyboards and creepily pitch-shifted vocals (cf: Dry And Dusty), often approaching the dislocated androgyny that she used on The Knife's brilliant Silent Shout album.
There is a vague sense of holding pattern here rather than massive innovation. Without brother Olof as a guiding hand on the droning sequencers the tunes fall a bit by the wayside. Keep The Streets Empty For Me, for instance, consists of little more than two note backing leavened only by a questionable pan pipe sample. But this very tiny drawback doesn't stop Fever Ray from being the kind of brilliant album that it may not make sense to play if you're prone to nightmares.
It's a wayward but rewarding venture into territory that challenges and provokes. But it's not for the squeamish. --Chris Jones
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Product Description
STANDARD EDITION : Debut 2009 album! Austere synth-pop 'n' sonambulant atmospherics by the solo project of Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife. Includes "If I Had A Heart".
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is haunting, evocative stuff. Karin Dreijer Andersson digitally manipulates her voice throughout the album to sound sluggish and weary, high and low-pitched, but occasionally as on 'When I Grow Up', her real and strikingly beautiful voice pierces through the murk and establishes an innovative use of the voice as instrument.
The lyrics are abstract as though they are constructed dream-like, and the line 'We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness and we dream about heaven' in the song 'Seven' becomes something deeply profound and tragic.
Initially the songs blend together but subsequent listens reveal layers of complexity perhaps disguised by the mid-tempo pace of the album. Unlike The Knife's more danceable pulsing beats from 'Silent Shout', this is slower, more meditative, but ultimately just as eerie and starved of emotion. If anything the cold and hollow synths and percussion here betray a sense of sadness and a search for something tangibly human. 'Dry and Dusty' ends with the line 'And I long for every moment' which to me is as emotionally telling and relatable as it is foreboding and isolating.
I didn't feel disturbed by this music as much as I felt comforted, because the detachment on display tells me there's not just 'happy' or 'depressing' music, there's a whole spectrum of emotions present in these ten tracks that express much more than you would expect. This is best summed up by 'Keep The Streets Empty For Me' and it's final line, 'Uncover our heads and reveal our souls', and here Dreijer Andersson does just that.
The lyrics are abstract as though they are constructed dream-like, and the line 'We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness and we dream about heaven' in the song 'Seven' becomes something deeply profound and tragic.
Initially the songs blend together but subsequent listens reveal layers of complexity perhaps disguised by the mid-tempo pace of the album. Unlike The Knife's more danceable pulsing beats from 'Silent Shout', this is slower, more meditative, but ultimately just as eerie and starved of emotion. If anything the cold and hollow synths and percussion here betray a sense of sadness and a search for something tangibly human. 'Dry and Dusty' ends with the line 'And I long for every moment' which to me is as emotionally telling and relatable as it is foreboding and isolating.
I didn't feel disturbed by this music as much as I felt comforted, because the detachment on display tells me there's not just 'happy' or 'depressing' music, there's a whole spectrum of emotions present in these ten tracks that express much more than you would expect. This is best summed up by 'Keep The Streets Empty For Me' and it's final line, 'Uncover our heads and reveal our souls', and here Dreijer Andersson does just that.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:MP3 Download
This is the debut album from Fever Ray (she's Karin Dreijer Andersson). A great and evocative voice, Karin is in tune and here brings your sound (a style alike The Knife), some more natural, a eletronic world music, the lyrics are like stories, stories almost like something in the shadows, simple and mysterious it take you away to a distant world. Wonderful! She creates a mysthical atmosphere (like Bjork), but some songs keeps the connection to the 80's like the excellent Seven, and still great songs with her normal vocal (no synthetic proccess) Keep Street Empty For Me, Now's The Only Time I Know" and When I Grow Up.
A delicious travel around a mysterious world, that just only Karin knows the roads.
A delicious travel around a mysterious world, that just only Karin knows the roads.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:MP3 Download
I was suprised to be able to get this so quickly seeing as the official release date was supposed to be the end of March..then lo and behold the digital version is advertised to release mid Jan...good stuff!
The solo album The Knifes Karin Drejer Andersson-this is dark, unsettling but utterly beguiling stuff.
If it took a while or if its still taking time for 'if I had a heart' to grow on you, do not fear, it'll happen- and when it does you wont be able to get enough of it! As for the rest of the album there are one or two moments akin to that track and also a few lighter but still completley captivating. All killer no filler...buy it now!
The solo album The Knifes Karin Drejer Andersson-this is dark, unsettling but utterly beguiling stuff.
If it took a while or if its still taking time for 'if I had a heart' to grow on you, do not fear, it'll happen- and when it does you wont be able to get enough of it! As for the rest of the album there are one or two moments akin to that track and also a few lighter but still completley captivating. All killer no filler...buy it now!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent album, but the DVD has problems (updated).
I bought this to replace my mp3 version of the album which had become corrupted. The album is brilliant. It's rare that I can say there's not one song on there I don't like. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Ian
Great :)
I won't lie, first few times I heard this album I hated it. But then after a while something caught and I just couldn't get it out of my head! Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. Stevenson
great album!
came across the first song watching "breaking bad" tv show and it was so hypnotic! immediately i went on-line to search for more songs of this band and found that this was the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ak Tumilowicz
Atmospheric and unsettling
This CD was a real discovery. The lyrics are disconcerting and full of strong images; the singer's voice is distinctive; the sound owes something to Japan, something to Portishead,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Simon Everett
If I had a heart I could love you
Fever Ray does not make music. They make dark, eerie electronic soundscapes that hum and buzz like a chorale of ghosts, filled with the twisting vocals of Karin Dreijer Andersson. Read more
Published 9 months ago by E. A Solinas
Fantastic!
There aren't many albums that I can listen to all the way through over and over but this is one of them.
Published 12 months ago by Sneph
Great contemporany music
Quality and original music is still available today.Fever Ray is one of such example.Her music brings something new to the ear of the listener, something more like a book or... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Brasoveanu Ciprian
What devil is this that hath bewitched me?
The first song by Fever Ray I ever heard was, coincidentally, the first song on the album: "If I Had a Heart". It was a kind of music I had never heard before, and I was entranced. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mr. R. J. Wilkes
There Really Are No Words................
Still listening to Fever Ray obsessively after so long. If you enjoyed Silent Shout by The Knife, then I've no doubt you'll connect with this even more. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. J. Price
Great background music to work to
If you want to listen to inspiring, uplifting music that drives you through the working day, this is it. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Scooter
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